Junk E-mail
I have discovered that some people are receiving junk E-mail that appears to have been sent from one or more of my @BestByDesign.com E-mail addresses.
That junk E-mail was not sent by me. Spamming you is not a smart way for me to build excellent customer relations.
So why are you receiving the junk mail?
There are one or two things that are possibly happening.
- Somewhere in the world, someone has:
- my E-mail address in their address book, and,
- your E-mail address in their address book, and,
- a “mass-mailing” computer virus or other malware in their computer, and,
- no (or out of date) antivirus and anti-malware programs, and/or no software firewall to stop unauthorized outgoing E-mail.
- Your E-mail address, and mine, was gathered by one of the many spambot programs that search the web for E-mail addresses. Those addresses are collected by the “owner” of the spambot, then sold to spammers who then use the addresses in mass spam-mail campaigns, with one of the addresses randomly selected as the faked FROM address.
The malware scanned their computer for E-mail addresses, then picked one of those addresses as a faked “From” address (apparently one of my addresses), then the malware sent itself to all the other E-mail addresses, including yours.
Unfortunately for both you and me, there is nothing you or I can do to stop the junk E-mail that is coming from those other infected computers, or from the spammers.
To ensure that my computers are not sending junk E-mail:
- my antivirus and my software firewall programs are both “always on”. The antivirus program is set to scan all files, on access.
- I have configured my software firewall to require it to ask permission for all programs that want access to the Internet.
- I scan my computers at least every week with a current and up-to-date antivirus program (ZoneLabs ZoneAlarm software firewall with antivirus), and with three anti-malware programs (Spybot Search & Destroy, Lavasoft’s Ad-Aware, and Microsoft’s Windows Defender).
- I have “active protection” enabled, to prevent most malware from being able to install itself.
- my Local Area Network is shielded from the Internet by a hardware firewall - Network Address Translation (NAT) built-in to my router.
In summary, if you received any junk mail with a BestByDesign.com return address, I regret the inconvenience, but it didn't come from me, and there is nothing I can do about stopping it.
revised: March 23, 2007