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Email Spoofing and Non-Delivery Receipt Messages

Email spoofing, or sending an email message under a false user name, is a common problem. Unfortunately, there is little that can be done to completely stop it. The best that can be done is to quarantine most spoofed messages. Luckily, spoofing rarely means that your account has been compromised; it just means that the sender lied about the return address. Nevertheless, most people find it annoying.

Indentifying When You Have Been Spoofed

How do you know if others are falsely using your user name to send out fraudulent messages? Usually, you will see a lot of non-delivery receipt (NDR) messages in your email account or in your Message Center quarantine. Such NDR messages represent a growing form of spam.

If You Have Been Spoofed  . . .

If you get just a few of these messages, it is easiest to simply delete them. However, if you are bombarded with NDR messages in your email inbox, the Computing Center can help you by having those messages sent to your quarantine.

Typically the volume of junk delivery messages to your email inbox will naturally stop in a couple of days. However, to help reduce the small percentage of junk traffic that is currently reaching your INBOX now we can configure an additional spam filtering option for your account and all invalid non-delivery receipt (NDR) messages will be quarantined in your Message Center.

If the Computing Center Adjusts Your Quarantine Settings  . . .

Should your Haverford email account become the target of NDR spam outbreak, please email helpdesk@haverford.edu and ask us to temporarily enable this special NDR spam filtering on your account. This should help you -- do carefully scan your message center for any “real” NDR messages alerting to an email that you sent to an incorrect address. Most "real" NDR messages (messages that you sent, but addressed incorrectly) will still get to your inbox, but a small percentage of non-spam NDRs may be quarantined. This happens because some mail servers send NDR messages using an invalid format. You will see all NDRs for messages you send to @Haverford addresses, except in the very rare case where a Haverford user is forwarding email off-campus to a server that sends invalid NDRs.

While the special NDR filtering is in place, please carefully monitor your Message Center quarantine for real NDRs, and to see when the number of bogus NDRs subsides. Once your NDR spam subsides, please email helpdesk@haverford.edu again and ask us to remove this special treatment from your account.