Suspect Mail, questions needing answers

[Whizz]

Guys,
I know this is going to sound  like a silly question but for a couple of weeks now I have been receiving hundreds and hundreds of failed email messages. It am sure this all started just after that scum bag advertising 'member' joined but since then I have received an untold number of "Mail Delivery System" and "Postmaster @....." type messages, so many in fact that I have had to change my email address.

So my question to the resident Operator/Email guru's is...how do I stop these f***ing things chocking my email system. I don't think they are spam type messages, I think that this is to do with these emails flooding from one place to another automatically.

Any of you smart blokes got a solution that I can carry out so that I can use my old email again?

[Biggles]

If they have similarities, you can filter them straight to trash using the key characteristics as triggers.

[Brock]

If these messages are coming with contents such as undeliverable mail, or similar, then your email address has been used as the addressee of an email that has been broadcast every where. By now, the responses should have stopped, so just go and delete all email from the server. When the mail box is empty, let it sit dormant for a while to check for stray replies. If nothing more, then go back to using it.

Option 2 is to contact your email provider and get them to delete the account,and then recreate it at a later date.

[Whizz]

Thanks guys, Brock I think you are entirely correct, but at the moment there are over 1,300 emails in the dammed address, so deleting them will be a nightmare. One other problem is that the email provider is Telstra, so after God-knows how many hours of being on hold I will almost certainly end up talking to a Indian who really doesn't speak English clearly. I wish they kept the Service aspects of accounts in our Country within our Country!!

However I do appreciate everyone's  help.

[Marcus]

Postmaster, is your email system.

What mail program are you using. and can you post the entire postmaster message. It will usually say what the issue is in the middle of all the gobadly gook

[Pezzz]

"Postmaster" is a required email address for a mail server to serve Non Delivery Reports (NDRs) to let someone sending mail in know that the email didn't arrive due to some reason.
Spammers take advantage of this by sending large volumes of emails to "stupidname@domain.com" and then redirect the "bounce" back to "someoneelse@anotherdomain.com".
This is what is known as "backscatter".
Unfortunately unless you have control of the actual mail server itself there is no way you can control backscatter.
There are 2 fairly simple fixes for this.
1 - write  rule into your mail client saying that anything coming from postmaster@ get deleted or
2 - use a decent anti spam/antivirus program.
Note: if you use method 1 then if you accidentally make a typo sending an email to someone (like steak@ozstoc.com), it will not get there and you will never know.
Hope this helps.

Postmaster, is your email system.

You may be confused with postfix ....   

[Whizz]

Oh I love talking t people who know their stuff.

I made a small addition to my "junk" email process in Outlook 2007 which I use, then added the original address to it and let it transfer everything from the old address to the new as "Junk". After about 30 minutes there were about 1,700 emails in there. I then organised them by transmission address so I could actually identify ones that I was interested in (all 12!). I then deleted the rest, and left the account connected to see if it is still getting this crap...so far it is quiet, so God willing it looks like it might be fixed!

Does this sound OK?

[Marcus]

Postmaster, is your email system.

You may be confused with postfix ....   

Yes... yes I was, because we run our own email server here at work, i do see alot of postmaster messages.... confusion ensues hahaha

[Marcus]

Does this sound OK?

You could even go so far as contacting you ISP to filter those out from their end so you never see them

[Biggles]

I made a small addition to my "junk" email process in Outlook 2007 which I use, then added the original address to it and let it transfer everything from the old address to the new as "Junk".

ummm

If they have similarities, you can filter them straight to trash using the key characteristics as triggers.

[Yorkie]

I had a similar situation last year, bigpond closed my email account within 24hrs, took me an hour on the phone to india to get it reinstated and had to change my password.