Home Forums Networks & Cross-Platform Networking Business Email Server's gone CRAZY

In the last 8 hours or so, we've had about EIGHT HUNDRED repeats of a spurious bounced-back email.

I'm now having to go in there every hour and clear out up to hundred each time. They are all the same. They look like this sample just gathered for you:

noreply@flying-blue.com Undeliverable 04/27 20:01:57
noreply@flying-blue.com Undeliverable 04/27 20:02:08
noreply@flying-blue.com Undeliverable 04/27 20:02:09
noreply@flying-blue.com Undeliverable 04/27 20:02:18
noreply@flying-blue.com Undeliverable 04/27 20:02:20
noreply@flying-blue.com Undeliverable 04/27 20:02:22
noreply@flying-blue.com Undeliverable 04/27 20:02:23
noreply@flying-blue.com Undeliverable 04/27 20:02:32
noreply@flying-blue.com Undeliverable 04/27 20:02:33

and on and on for pages/screens-worth. Look at the timings, sometimes they're every second or two!

I have of course been onto the ISP's support website and detailed the problem and received a "ticket" - computer generated.

Since then (a few hours ago) I've found myself obliged to go into my email box to delete these HUNDREDS of bounce-backs, every hour or so. I have now forwarded copy+paste details (like this one) to them twice. No response.

Needlesstosay, I have never sent an email to "noreply@flyingblue.com". They are a legitimate part of KLM airline, Flying Blue is their frequent-flyer club, I am a member. I do not want to blacklist them and WHY should I anyway?

This is clearly an ISP server problem, but they are silent. They are doing nothing. They are ignoring me. Therefore I am posting my growing irritation here, on the internet.

Is there any content in these emails? Are they all the same, or is each one showing different header information?

noreply@flying-blue.com is the address of a mailbox that cannot, by its nature, receive e-mail, so your attempt to bounce an e-mail to that address has apparently initiated some sort of weird "feedback" loop.

("noreply@xyz.com" is typically the originating address of e-mail that is not intended to be replied to, thus "noreply.")

Edit: For future reference, it's generally not a great idea to bounce unwanted e-mail, because it tells the senders that they've reached a "live" address.

They are all the same. Since I've been away in the interim, another hundred have arrived.

Hallo artie

At no point have I ever attempted to bounce an email to that address.

They have all arrived - and keep arriving at the rate of about 100 per hour, spontaneously. i.e., without any action on my part whatsoever.

For future reference: if I say that I have been on the receiving end of my email-provider's server going crazy, that is the situation to the best of my belief. Additionally, as I stated in the opening post, this IS a legitimate domain (flying-blue.com) as I explained.



Thank you for taking the trouble to reply, but it has served no purpose other than to demonstrate that you didn't read my opening post properly; and irritate me further with this situation.

Cheers.

I responded to the apparent reality of the situation your post presented, and despite your protestations, it still seems unlikely to me that an e-mail dispatched from your mailbox was spontaneously created by your ISP.

But since nothing's impossible, maybe this will help shed some light on the situation: If you're e-mail client is Apple's Mail.app, open up one of the bounced messages, hit command-shift-H to reveal the long headers, and post them. (You'll want to edit prior to posting, but rather than leave blank spaces, give us an idea of what was edited out.)

By the way, I sent an e-mail to noreply@flying-blue.com, and I got this response...once:


Edit: Just for the heck of it, why don't you navigate to (assuming you've got it) Mail > Window > Previous Recipients and see if maybe, just maybe...

Yes I'm using Mail. I checked that Previous Recipients as you suggested (just for the heck of it) and found it vaguely interesting. Who is/are the maybe, just maybe, I should have been looking for? flying-blue.com? They were not on the the list.

Meanwhile, I've been in email contact with the ISP nearly all day today. To cut a long story short it has stopped for now. I have no confidence that it has stopped for good.

They (ISP) say one thing, I say another. Here is another thread on this board on this exact same subject - with a different analysis:

http://www.finetunedmac.com/forums/ubbth...h=true#Post8671

Feb 2010: 2 years ago

This is called Backscatter Spam and there's no fix for it. Hope they don't pick you again on the next wave.