Thread: help with email

Hi,
I would like to have email that is sent to trw@mywebsite.com forwarded to another address. However, some one is using my domain name to spam and a ton of that mail is returned to me because I have set up to forward mail addressed to my website.
Is there any way for email to certain addresses be forwarded but not the spam?
The spam usually has an address such as f9hj9wf@mywebsite.com and does not use the "trw".
Hope this makes some sense.

set up a forwarder in your email control panel.

Terry,
Probably the spaming is being done via your forms. You can read about it here:
http://netisopen.com/computer/formhijack.html

And the solution is here:
http://www.netisopen.com/computer/TF001/phpmailto.html

Andy

Thanks for the reply General. That's where I am having a difficult time. It probably is quite straight forward but.......I am still not able to grasp it after watching the great tuts many times.

Andy,
I am using forms generated by VH member Davidundalicia. Do I need to redo?

I believe that Davids forms have security measures implemented. Check with David to see if there is a vulnerability.

Did this problem occur when you had gone to Davids forms?

Andy

I cant remember for sure but I believe that it occurred when I was just using a mailto: form.
Is there any way to check stats or my email in the control panel to see if they are actually using BV servers?

Noone can use your mailserver to send mails, unless they can have access to your CP and they can setup an email account on your domain. Spammers usually use virtual addresses, as the one you described,, but use their own mailservers. They just "mascherade" the email adress, as being sent from your domain. With this said, IF, and i say IF, they are using your form script (i don't beleive they use the form, just the script) , use the new ABVFP script: it will check every single field of your form, to see if there are @ symbols included (spamming bots HAVE to use it, in order to send spam mail to multiple recipients) and if there are, it will abort mailing. Just make sure to set the correct extensions to your field names.
The script also uses a referer check to see if the info has been sent from your site or from an external site, and will denny access to spam bots.

Sounds like this is the place where I need to ask this question.

I have email addresses on my website for contacting a few different people, all of the addresses are blah blah @my domain name and then these are all forwarded to my outlook express personal account.

I seem to get this message a few times a day

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

08stocknews@travelite.com


So what is this telling me other than this place tried to subscribe to my newsletter or tried contacting one of the email addresses. Does this mean this place is using my email address for something else, or is it just coming back to me because my email adddresses when someone uses them off the site an autoresponder message is sent to them, and therefore this message is undeliverable to the above.

Know what I mean?? Is there anything that I should be doing about this?

Thanks

And here is another

This message was created automatically by mail delivery software.

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

92stocknews@tree-logic.com
SMTP error from remote mail server after RCPT TO:<92stocknews@tree-logic.com>:
host messagerie.nwt.fr [217.147.195.100]: 550 <92stocknews@tree-logic.com>, Recipient unknown

------ This is a copy of the message, including all the headers. ------

Does look like a spam attempt. Is this contact from a form on your site? If so- which one did you use (Davids, Navaldesign, Formmaker Pro, my tutorials).

Andy

Originally Posted by Andy128

Does look like a spam attempt. Is this contact from a form on your site? If so- which one did you use (Davids, Navaldesign, Formmaker Pro, my tutorials).

Andy

Hi Andy, thanks for helping ....

No I haven't used a contact form, perhaps I need to ... what do you think?

This is just actually posting an email address on the site as an email link, you know like, I've used the word contact and highlighted it and linked it to my email address ...

that is probably a bad idea right?

Any help you can give so that I could get this all changed if I need to, would be great ...
Thanks

Yes- Reason is that bots troll pages for e-mail addresses and then target them for spam. So...it appears that your e-mail address has become a target for spam mail. They are not using your server or anything- you will just be getting a lot of spam. The addresses given 92stocknews or 08stocknews I would guess are spam and not legit customers.

In anyevent- it appears that they did not get through as there was a delivery SMTP error.

One work around for posting your e-mail address would be to create your e-mail address as a jpg or gif. This can be done in MS Paint or any other photo program. Keep in mind- saving as gif will give you transparent capabilities.

Cheers-

Andy

Originally Posted by CarbonTerry

Thanks for the reply General. That's where I am having a difficult time. It probably is quite straight forward but.......I am still not able to grasp it after watching the great tuts many times.

Andy,
I am using forms generated by VH member Davidundalicia. Do I need to redo?

CarbonTerry:
Email me or use the contact form at any of my sites and I will send you an update...............or if you wish, I will install another form for you using naval&#180;s program.

Andy:
Thanks for the heads up....................

To get back to the original problem. I have added a forwarder but the mail is not forwarded.
I have set undirected email to "fail". Could that be the problem?

Originally Posted by Andy128

Yes- Reason is that bots troll pages for e-mail addresses and then target them for spam. So...it appears that your e-mail address has become a target for spam mail. They are not using your server or anything- you will just be getting a lot of spam. The addresses given 92stocknews or 08stocknews I would guess are spam and not legit customers.

In anyevent- it appears that they did not get through as there was a delivery SMTP error.

One work around for posting your e-mail address would be to create your e-mail address as a jpg or gif. This can be done in MS Paint or any other photo program. Keep in mind- saving as gif will give you transparent capabilities.

Cheers-

Andy

Thanks Andy, that is just what I shall do ... so I'll just make a .gif of the word email and then link the .gif to the email addy, would that be correct?
Then they can't pick up the addy?

Not exactly- Just put the gif there. If you link it then the bots find the href link in the html code.

The other more secure route is to have php contact forms.

Hope that helps

Andy

oh it's a cruel world at times isn't it ... ok ...i think i'll go with the gifs, sounds easier, but that means when someone wants to email they would need to copy and paste, I guess that wouldn't be so bad then right, well certainly better than all the spam email ...

thanks again Andy ....

LadyEye-

Yes it is a cruel world. And- its about to get worse. You see, cut and paste in this instance won't work either. Reason- it is gif, not text. Sorry.

The only real secure way it to have a form that they can fill in their contact info, and hit submit and hte form is processed by a php script. That way- everything is hidden from site. The spamming and avenues to reap peoples e-mail addresses is only going to get worse as time goes on I am afraid. These robot and spider scripts are very sophisticated.

Sorry to burst the bubble. Good news- if you decide to do a php mailto form/script- there is plent of help around here to do it. Additionally- it is much easier for your visitors.

Cheers,

Andy

Or, you can use an email encryption script, like in http://www.dynamicdrive.com/emailriddler/

which allows you to obfuscate your email address.

You can also link directly to an image using this script.

I always suggest that a site should have at least some contact details. Google hardly trusts you without contact details.
As for the real contact needs, i agree with Andy: a contact form is better also because you ask your visitor the details you need to know. In a simple email, he may include or not this info.

Wow ... this is great Naval .... the email encruption script, thank you very very much, just tried one to see if I knew what to do and it couldn't be any easier ... so this will solve my problem ... I really really appreciate it ... have a ton of these to change on my pages ... so will be busy doing this ... will be worth it ...

This is perfect!!! I was able to master it!! :)

Thank you Andy & Naval .... you've been a terrific help!! May consider a form on another day, or should I say another week when I have time to attempt that and seek help. :)

Yeah!!

Naval and Andy .... this tip really needs to go under tips and tricks .... it's one of the best ... so easy to get rid of a complicated problem ...

Me again .... one further question ...

On one page of my site, I have a page that you cannot enter unless you have a password, reason it contains email addys of members who join ... this page is under a lock and key .... are the spammers and bots able to access that page to get those email addresses, should I be changing all those to this format as well, or are they safe because they are locked up??

Thanks again.

They are safe. Don't worry.

awe great news ... tks :)