Lately I've been getting an unusual amount of bounced e-mails for messages I never sent. In the past 24 hours, there have been about two dozen messages being bounced back to my inbox. The original messages are all classic spam. Cheap prescriptions, black hat SEO, etc. The "original sending address" is always gibberish, something like ayphgs@mydomain .com. They're messages I never sent from addresses that don't exist. The rejecting mail server is always overseas; there are a lot of .jp and .tk domains generating the bounce messages.

So here's my question...

Are these fake bounce messages from spammers trying to trick me into reading their garbage, or are these real bounce messages caused by a spammer forging my domain into their headers?

I would bet they are bounced emails created by spammers
I have been getting a lot of them in the last few days that appear to be from my domain
but when I look at the headers they are coming from another IP.

It runs in cycles. You will go months without this happening and then bang! It's a fact of owning a domain name.

So... nothing to worry about?

There is nothing you can do about it.

TCH can see the headers and see it was not you sending the spam.