Someone has been masking my domain name...

February 3, 2006 2:26 AM

Someone has been masking my domain name and started to bulk spam. Now when I send an email to a client 9 times out of 10 it will be in their Spam Filter. How can I resolve this.

Its really annoying as its a business domain name.

posted by spinko to Computers & Internet (10 answers total)

From the sounds of it, you're being joe-jobbed. Previously, and previously on AskMe, although those more ask about how to deal with the bounces. I'd suggest emailing them from an alternative address and politely ask them to adjust their spam filters to filter on content and not the email address it comes from.
posted by edd at 2:48 AM on February 3, 2006

You're boned. Even after the spam goes away, chances are your domain will remain in the filter.

You could spend time and money contacting everyone in the world to have them modify their filter or you could just start sending email from a different, but similar, domain. That's what I would do.
posted by unixrat at 5:33 AM on February 3, 2006

There is nothing that you can do. You are absolutely and totally screwed. However, whoever is dumping you on domain name alone is kind of stupid too. Is there any way that you can find out what list you're on? Have a client send you an email, then copy & paste the headers in here somewhere. If you're on one of the SpamAssassin RBL lists, and you're a 'joe-job' victim, the list admins are very nice about it and will remove you.

Or, tell us the domain name. I'd be happy to look it up for you and dig around a bit.
posted by drstein at 6:24 AM on February 3, 2006

Regardless of anything else you do, you should make sure your domain name has an SPF Record. That will pretty quickly make your domain useless to spammers.
posted by alms at 6:57 AM on February 3, 2006

Along the above suggestions...

What about a simple variant on your domain name: like "TheMetafilter"...and in the email mention your address is being spammed by someone else (not related to you in any way.) ? Yeah, it's a $20-30 solution.
posted by filmgeek at 7:03 AM on February 3, 2006

Make 100% sure that it's your domain name that's in their spam filter before you take any steps to get a new domain name. That's a really ineffective way to stop spam, so I'd be surprised if that's what's causing it with such regularity.

Specifically, make sure that your mail server's IP address hasn't got listed on any RBLs (check here), and that your message isn't tripping any of the default rules in major antispam content filters, starting with SpamAssassin.
posted by mendel at 7:30 AM on February 3, 2006

Mendel makes a good point. However, if they are blocking on your domain name, one thing you can do is set up a second mailing address under your domain name (eg, [e-mail]), or perhaps one per client (eg [e-mail], [e-mail]), and then ask them to whitelist the appropriate addresses.

I hate the idea of abandoning a perfectly good e-mail address because of spammers, but I don't know what else to do.
posted by adamrice at 8:25 AM on February 3, 2006

Try the spam database lookup on DNS Stuff. It'll show you which blacklists you're on, and from there you can contact them and see what you need to do to get off of them.
posted by Laen at 10:39 AM on February 3, 2006

SPF won't make it useless to spammers. They'll still joe-job with the domain. i see the results of it every single day.

SPF is pretty useless overall.
posted by drstein at 2:29 PM on February 3, 2006

Response by poster: Thanks for your help
posted by spinko at 4:50 AM on February 4, 2006