Backscatter (NDR) Spam - Protect Yourself
With every advancement in anti spam software, the spammers become more desperate and more inventive. They have even discovered how to take advantage of standard operations of most e-mail servers.
It's called NDR (Non Delivery Receipt) Spam or backscatter. Have you ever received a message in your inbox saying that something you sent was undeliverable or bounced? Spammers are now using this courtesy response to get their information in your inbox. They send e-mails to addresses that do not exist, and say that it is from you. Or they use your e-mail address as the sender for their entire, enormous mailing list. Then when any messages bounce back they are sent to your e-mail address. This is possible simply because email servers cannot authenticate that the person sending the message is in fact the owner of the address being used.
How would a spammer get these e-mail addresses? It is not unusual for a company or person to post a contact e-mail address on a company or personal website. Spammers can collect these, and use them as their own address for their enormous mailing lists, thereby eliminating the need them to deal with the inevitable 'Return To Sender' NDR e-mails.
This type of spam can be quite dangerous. Because technically the message is coming from the reader's own mail server, the chances of them opening it, and anything that might be attached, is much higher then with your typical spam. And for the exact same reasons it is considered much more insidious as well because it's much harder for a spam blocker to filter out. The most likely outcome of NDR spam is that a single domain will be spoofed as the sender of a spam message, and then be inundated by NDR messages from the long list that the message was sent to, overwhelming a company's exchange server. At its simplest it can overwhelm an exchange server, and force a user to waste time sorting through their inbox.
Little can be done by an individual to eliminate this type of spam, but an internal IT manager can turn off the option to have NDR messages produced at the mail sever. Spam filters can also be put in place to delete any messages that contain frequently used spam content, or subject-line only messages with no content. This can make it a little more difficult for users to send and receive their e-mail, but if they are made aware of the restrictions necessary to maintain optimum operations, problems can often be avoided.
In general this type of spam causes a significant nuisance to users and system administrators, but as with other types of spam, the technology is even now being developed and implemented to put another road block in the way of backscatter.
Related Tags: anti spam, backscatter, ndr spam, non delivery report
Jes Darmanin works at GFI Software: a company that creates professional anti spam software for servers. More information about GFI MailEssentials - The leading server antispam solution on http://www.gfi.com/mes
Your Article Search Directory : Find in ArticlesRecent articles in this category:
- How An Email Spam Blocker Will Save You Time And Effort
Electronic mail is a fantastic innovation, but for millions of people it has become something very i - The Dreaded Issue Of Spam
All about SpamSpam is the scourge of the Internet. Spam, as everyone knows, is the unsolicited adver - Most Spam Comes From Us, Romania And Brazil
At the end of the first quarter of 2009, Romania was placed in the top three sources of spam, with a - Affiliate Fraud- Is It Worth It?
If you're into affiliate marketing it is important to know what affiliate fraud is.Affiliate fraud h - Your Home Computer Will be Safe and Secured if You Follow These Steps
As a home computer user, you need to make sure that your computer is safe from any form of maliciou - Spam Mail
Spam Mail: An overviewHow Does A Spam Mail Overflow Initiates?Each day more and more neophytes to th - Spams and Their Filtering Techniques
We are all familiar with word Spam. This is something we encounter almost on a daily basis in our m - Anti-Spam Software: The Importance Of Anti-Spam Software
You may have have found yourself in the following position. You open your email program, get up to - Anti Spam filtering: Do You Use Anti Spam Filtering?
Spam email can be stopped or controlled by using a spam filter. Email filtering software can be ins - Nigerian Scams-they're Still Around
It's not easy to make money on the Internet. And that is what some - not to honorable people- try to
Most viewed articles in this category:
- How To Be More Specific In Blocking Spam
Spam is often thought to be such a difficult subject. But actually, it is not as difficult to compre - The REAL Origins and Meaning of the Word SPAM
There's a lot of false information out there about why we refer to mass unsolicited commercial maili - How Web Sites Can Generate Spam Email
Every day tens of thousands of new web sites come online, many attracting big audiences, often due t - Who are Spammers
Most of us receive spam at one time or another. A spammer is someone who sends unsolicited e-mails i - Why a Blocked List of Email Addresses is Useless
Do you maintain a list of blocked email addresses in your email system?This is one of the biggest wa - How to Manage Your Email Inbox More Effectively
Your inbox is the nerve centre to your incoming email, but all too often is clogged up with dozens o - How to Prevent Email Spam
You should have heard much about spam. What exactly spam is? I define spam as something unrequested. - What Should We Do About Spam?
I receive over 50 emails per day. Usually, close to 45 of them are spam. For the uninitiated, unso - The Definition of Spam - Do You Know What spam eMail Really is?
The word "Spam" as applied to Email means Unsolicited Bulk Email ("UBE").Unsolicited means that the - Spam, Lovely Spam, Wonderful Spam
Do you remember the quote from the Monty Python sketch in 1970. Spam is nowadays mostly known to be