1. I keep getting replies to e-mails that I never sent!
2. How do spammers get my address?
3. What can *I* do about Bounce Attacks?
4. Why does my Outlook keep receiving duplicate messages?
5. I'm receiving duplicate messages right now, how can I stop it?

I keep getting replies to e-mails that I never sent!

We agree. You almost certainly did not. More likely, 1) a spam engine is advertising to your e-mail address using a “Bounce Attack", one of the latest weapons in a spammers arsenal or 2) you are seeing the left over backscatter where your address was one of tens of thousands used in a DDOS attack on someone else's mail server. Either way, it's garbage.

Bounce Spam
Instead of sending you a piece of spam directly, the e-mails are purposefully sent to a false address, so they can be “bounced" back to you, kind of like “return to sender, address unknown". The reality is, you were the intended recipient all along.

Bounce Viruses
Spammers aren’t the only ones who use this technique. Today's viruses make extensive use of Bounce Attack delivery methods

Secondary Smoke or backscatter
Sometimes you aren't really the intended recipient of a Bounce Attack such as this. Viruses often try to use real e-mail addresses as their point of origin to fool scanners and to get others to open the infected “payload". They can be quite prolific, sending out tens of thousands of messages that “appear" to come from a single e-mail address. These kind of Bounce Attacks can bring a mail server to its knees for hours, corrupt affected e-mail mailboxes, and wreak general havoc. These are called a Denial of Service attack (DoS) or Distributed Denial of Service attack (DDoS).

How do spammers get my address?

Obviously you didn't ask for it. Spammers and viruses don't need you to, not when they can make use of Dictionary Attacks or numerous Harvesting methods. Lists of valid domain names are easy enough to acquire, the information is registered in the public domain. If your e-mail address is visible on your website, if you have replied to a public forum, bought something on e-bay or maybe even replied to an e-mail that was copied to a public forum... then your address can be easily harvested by spammers and viruses alike. Address books harvested from infected machines are bought and sold every day in the dark world of identity theft and black-hat advertising.

What can *I* do about Bounce Attacks?

There is little that you can personally do. There are some products that allow you to bounce these messages back, but you could just as easily be helping send the thing to some other poor innocent victim. Most of these Bounce Attacks are short annoying spam storms, but if you are in trouble, feel free to call us. We might be able to help you set up a filter on your account to get rid of most of that pesky e-mail.

Why does my Outlook keep receiving duplicate messages?

There are a number of situations that might cause Outlook to download duplicate messages:

I'm receiving duplicate messages right now, how can I stop it?

Delete the Mail
If you are not a Store and Forward Customer, simply delete the mail.

You can do this by logging onto your web based mail interface. Enter your full e-mail address and your password, then either delete the single message that is being duplicated, or all of them. Make sure that you have reviewed the content of your mailbox before you delete it! If there is far too much mail in your inbox to conveniently delete using the web based mail interface, call us on the phone or send us an e-mail, we'll be happy to delete your mailbox for you.

If you are one of our store and forward customer (you get your mail from a local Exchange server maintained by Advantage Services) then give us a call. We will inspect the mail queues here and at your location, and take the appropriate action.

• Download and install the latest Microsoft Office XP Service Pack and Patches. This is most easily done by accessing Office Update. If you are using a Microsoft Product to check your mail with, make sure that it is not an illegal copy! Advantage Services can help you determine if it is.
  
  
• Increase your server timeout settings to 10 minutes: Tools → E-mail accounts → View or change existing e-mail accounts → Select the account corresponding to your WDDX E-Mail POP account → Click the Change button → E-mail Accounts → More Settings → Internet E-mail Settings → Outgoing Server → Make sure that "my outgoing server (SMTP) requires authentication" is checked → Make sure that "use same settings as my incoming mail server" is selected → Advanced → Outgoing server (SMTP): 25 → Server Timeouts (Increase from 1 minute to 10 minutes)
  
  
• Empty the Deleted Items folder only when Outlook is not checking e-mail in the background.
  
  
• Configure Outlook so as not to check e-mail more frequently than ten minutes.
  
  
• Configure Outlook to download complete Item including attachments: Tools → Send/Receive → Send/Receive settings → Define Send/Receive groups → Click to select the group name, and then click Edit → Under Accounts, click to select the your WDDX POP3 account → Download complete Item including attachments