I noticed as of late that I've been getting a major amount of email that's spoofing my domain name. The subject includes the usual manipulation to get the unsophisticated user to open the email and (gasp) download the virus-ridden .zip attachment.

As I said, it started a couple of weeks ago and TCH Help Desk traced it back to some $?!@# people in South Africa - hence no way to do anything about it.

I have to assume that other people are receiving this 'poison' email and I'm concerned about what may be happening to the reputation of my domain name: namely, people getting screwed by opening this stuff and webmasters putting me on their blacklists.

Has anyone had a similar experience? And if so, can you offer some insight and/or advice on how to handle this problem?

Thanks!

This happens to more domain owners than you think. All ten of my domains go through this in what seems like cycles. Also, most companies block the senders IP and not the host name. Anyone worth their salt in a position to ban anything understands this problem and the tactics used by spammers and know what to look for to ban and what not to.

Thanks Rob, for your comforting words

I thought I would comment since I am the guy who sees most of the complaints about this.

There is a huge amount of spoofing going on. I've received more complaints in the last week than in the last 3 months about spoofing.

People often ask the question or make the statement: "This doesn't look good for my company. These e-mail addresses look like they come from my company. How can we stop this?"

For the record, if you have a website eventually you will be spoofed. There's nothing in e-mail that prevents it. This is why phishing scams are so rampant. People are spoofing e-mail address for PayPal, eBay, Banks, credit card companies .... the list goes on. This is done in the hopes that a few people out of thousands might get duped and give up some private information.

Lately though, it has been viruses who have been doing the spoofing. The e-mail addresses don't even exist in many cases. The virus has simply made up an e-mail address and attached your domain name to it.

Although this won't solve this problem, I do not recommend that you use a default e-mail address as it allows you to receive e-mail from any e-mail address attached to your domain name. This makes e-mail addresses that you have never created appear live and can be used for spamming purposes.

However, there is no way to stop spoofing. It happens to all companies large and small. So have comfort that you are not the only ones being spoofed.

I hope this information has helped.

Our company (my day job) has had a lot of this lately. The only thing saving us is that everyone here knows there is no "support@mycompany.com" or "administrator@mycompany.com". The other "good" thing, if you will, is that the only mails with our domain on it are going to people in our domain... not other businesses.

Take heart, most folks know this kind of thing is a scam. If you have customers, however, you may want to send them an email saying "There has been a rash of scam emails going around lately. This is the only account I will email you from so be completely suspicious of any other email claiming to come from 'administration' type accounts." or something to that effect.