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Failed Spam Notices

Frequently, they will use an address from the same list they are using for the To: addresses, and this could easily be your own email address.

This means:

• It may appear to others as though you are sending the spam.
• If the spam email can not be delivered, you will receive a delivery failure notification from the destination mail server.
• If To: address on a spam email is not valid, the message is delivered, by way of the notification, to the address on the From: line.

A good analogy is the return address you write on an envelope when you send US Postal Service mail. The address you provide is not the post office where you mail the letter, but rather where you want the letter returned, if the post office can not deliver it to the addressee.

We recommend that you simply delete these emails. They rarely contain enough information to reveal the true source of the spam email that caused the notice to be generated.

Sample Delivery Failure Notice

From: Mail Delivery Subsystem Message-Id: <200406230006.UAB04635@rly-yi03.mx.ao.com> To: Subject: Returned mail: User unknown Auto-Submitted: auto-generated (failure) X-Env-From: MAILER-DAEMON Tue Jun 22 19:06:55 2004 Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 20:06:49 -0400 (EDT) This is a MIME-encapsulated message --UAB04635.1087949209/rly-yi03.mx.aol.com The original message was received at Tue, 22 Jun 2004 20:06:31 -0400 (EDT) from asnet00-052.aus.texas.net [207.170.89.52] ----- The following addresses had permanent fatal errors ----- ----- Transcript of session follows ----- ... while talking to air-yi03.mail.ao.com.: >>> RCPT To: <<< 550 MAILBOX NOT FOUND 550 ... User unknown --UAB04635.1087949209/rly-yi03.mx.aol.com Content-Type: message/delivery-status Reporting-MTA: dns; rly-yi03.mx.aol.com Arrival-Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 20:06:31 -0400 (EDT) Final-Recipient: RFC822; user@aolwxyz.com Action: failed Status: 5.1.1 Remote-MTA: DNS; air-yi03.mail.ao.com Diagnostic-Code: SMTP; 550 MAILBOX NOT FOUND Last-Attempt-Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 20:06:49 -0400 (EDT) --UAB04635.1087949209/rly-yi03.mx.ao.com Content-Type: text/rfc822-headers Received: from ao.com (asnet00-052.aus.texas.net [207.170.89.52]) by rly-yi0 3.mx.ao.com (v99_r4.3) with ESMTP id MAILRELAYINYI38-7c040d8c962158; Tue, 22 Jun 2004 20:06:10 -0400 From: helpdeskspam@staff.texas.net To: user@aolwxyz.com Subject: hi Date: Tue, 22 Jun 2004 18:23:17 -0500 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0016----=_NextPart_000_0016" X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-AO-IP: 207.170.89.52 X-AO-SCOLL-SCORE: 0:XXX:XX X-AO-SCOLL-URL_COUNT: 0 Message-ID: <200406222006.7c040d8c962158@rly-yi03.mx.ao.com> --UAB04635.1087949209/rly-yi03.mx.ao.com--