Paul's Comments

A "joe job" is when someone sends out mail (typically spam) or Usenet postings and blames them on someone else. Well, it turns out one of the domains I own that does not send mail has been joe-jobbed because I'm getting bounces for the nonexistent from addresses that sent mail as if they were from my domain.

My guess is that I'd have a hard time tracking down whoever was responsible for the messages, and it's probably some botnet operator who has a huge collection of zombie machines to send out his spam. I end up having to clean up the messages of (1) bounce messages to nonexistent recipients; (2) whitelist requests, where the recipient says they don't recognize the e-mail address that sent them mail, and you have to click on a link to whitelist you as a person as opposed to being a bot sending spam; (3) bounce messages informing me the message was rejected as spam; (4) autoreplies from the recipients indicating they got the message but are out of the office, or away, or on vacation, or that they are no longer there and contact someone else.

Well, I didn't expect this, so the answer is to mark the domain as not sending mail. This requires use of a feature called "SPF" which allows a mail sender to indicate whom are the valid machines that send mail for their domain. I looked it up, and in fact my own ISP for the domain even has an option to add an SPF record indicating that the domain never sends out mail, so I did that.

So hopefully this will solve the problem, and I guess the next thing is to go in and lock down all the other domain names I have that don't send mail, so that essentially only this domain (paul-robinson.us) and one or two others I own will have outgoing mail transmission privileges, as none of the others send out messages.

And just another way that spammers put costs and trouble on other people. I mean, I get junk mail in my (postal) mailbox every day; I get so much mail that it's unusual when there's a day that I don't get some mail. But all that mail is postage paid, and actually helps support the Postal Service. Also, on occasion I've gotten some junk mail that I did find interesting; a company that sells fireworks sent me a nice catalog, and I might actually have ordered something except for the fact they can't ship or mail fireworks, I have to go to their store to get it, and their nearest location is [roughly 150 miles away] in Warfordsburg, Pennsylvania. I actually remember seeing the place once (the fireworks store), on my way back from Breezewood, "The town of Motels," and the closest interconnect to the Pennsylvania Turnpike. I also happen to reference the towns of Warfordsburg and Breezewood as a casual reference in my book "Instrument of God."

But the spam I get electronically imposes trouble and costs on me, and if I could figure a way to find those responsible and maybe hit them for costs and anything else, I would. If I thought there was money to be found I'd start looking to do that. To follow the money back to whoever put the ads in and sue them for damages, if I thought they had any assets to attach. Basically, even if the spam is sent by programmed botnet, it either has to lead to a domain name or to a telephone number, or in some fashion to some place that collects a credit-card number, which means someone who has a bank account. Either them or their advertising spamming companies, or both, and hit them for damages. I shouldn't have to clean up after them unless I got paid for it. Only problem is that I probably find neither is in the U.S. or I'd have to spend money to find where they are and sue them wherever they are located.

Why can't they set up their own fake domains and use those? No, they have to dump on me, and I do not like it. It may just get me mad enough to do something. I mean, I have lots of other things either I need to do as chores, or fun things I want to do; I shouldn't have to waste part of my precious and irreplaceable lifetime to clean up the messes from joe-jobbing spammers, I have my own messes to clean up! (Remember, I have to move by the 4th of June, so in addition to packing, I have to clean up places that got dirty from dust sitting there or just got dirty from normal wear-and-tear from living in a place.)

I mean, the incoming spam is bad enough, but now I have to deal with joe-jobbed outgoing spam too. Again, I really wish I could figure a way to squeeze money out of those doing this because I would go after them.