The good news is that the spammers very often do move on, so unless it’s been happening for more than a couple of weeks, you may be able to just wait it out. It can take several days for bounced email messages to make their way back to you, so again, depending on how long it’s been, it could be all from one or two mass mailings.

If the email address being spoofed is one of the major ISPs like Comcast or AOL, search their help sections for what to do. Some ISPs will help you out with the problem.

If the bounced email messages contain the full header of the original email you can probably figure out if it’s all one source. Use the methods described in the post above to determine the origin. Be sure you’re looking at the originating email header and not the header from the ISP informing you of the bounced message. (I’ve been confused before and very thoroughly researched the ISP that bounced the message. But you’re probably not as easily confused as I. LOL!)

First, determine if it’s originating from your own account. If so, it means someone hacked in to your email account and is using it to send the messages. If so, report it to the company that provides your service and follow their instructions.

Look at several bounced messages to see if they all start in the same place and it’s just one person, or if there are several different origins your address may have been added to a list. Also, if the email address is a common word or your name, it may be a dictionary attack (spammers use scripts to generate thousands of email addresses from common words and names).

When you see where it’s coming from, don’t automatically conclude that the originating server is the culprit. The spammer may have hacked into someone’s server to send the email so there may be another victim besides yourself.

Unfortunately, if nothing else works and the bounced messages don’t stop, you may have to change your email address and delete the spoofed one.

I hope you get it resolved soon!

When this happens, obviously they have to specify an e-mail address (assuming it’s not random) when they send their junk mail out. I also know that companies out there buy email address lists. Is there any chance that some how a list has been sold to a company specifying that for some reason my e-mail would be a good one to put in the return-to field, or should I just assume it’s just one person using my email over and over again to send their shady advertisements with 2nd grader spelling?

To retrieve and send the full header of a message you may need to change a setting in your email client and copy and paste the header into your report.

As I said in the article, I’m not sure if reporting spoofed email has any consequence for the originator, but there are some circumstances where it might be worth your time and effort to report.

If the spoofed email contains a phishing attempt for a company (like PayPal, eBay, or a bank), you can report it to that company. They will attempt to shut down the phishing site and they maintain a record of the attempt. Search the company’s contact page or help files for how to report the email and be sure to include the complete header when you send the email.

If you can determine where the email originated, you can report it to the originating ISP. But it’s not always easy to figure out the origin and spam often originates in countries that don’t have the laws or resources to pursue the spammers. If it will bring you some personal satisfaction you might want to try to find the origin and report it, but otherwise, I don’t know if it’s worth the time.