For the last month or so, my email has been hijacked and someone who apparently comes from Russia appears to be sending out emails and is able to get any failed return email to come to my address. So someone sends out the email and sets the return address to my account. From that point, the returns don’t go to the sender but to my email account. Great!
Here is the basic story. A month ago, I started getting hundreds of returned emails back to my account. Obviously I wasn’t purposefully sending out the spam or Russian character based emails, but they would come back to my Comcast account. Ok…. ok… first things first, I will crank up the firewall and update all the virus protection and scan for other pests on the computer. I did that for everything on my network and still no luck. I changed passwords and did just about every common step that I think you can do.
I’ve called Comcast and alerted them of the issue and basically the answer is pretty poor. “Yea it happens and it should slowly fade away with time.” I’ve gone hunting on the internet and it seems that some providers are good about monitoring for this type of activity and others are poor or just don’t care. Comcast seems to be in the group that either doesn’t care or doesn’t want to install the equipment needed to stop this type of abuse.
But how do I know it isn’t a virus using my computer? I guess I can’t say 100%…. well I think I can actually. I can shut everything down and leave for a day and come back to find additional returns for the times when everything was off. So that and the fact that the Comcast “Abuse Specialist” said it was pretty common lead to my conclusion. Nothing I can do but wait for Comcast to fix the issue at their level or enjoy the numerous returns.
So today I found a great site that will locate an IP address. I’m certain it isn’t perfect, but it is fun to see where all these email apparently are coming from. (To get the originating IP, you need to view the Source code of the email – all email programs are slightly different, but it should be an option). After grabbing a random 5 returns out of my email junk folder, I’m thinking that I have a built in vacation planner. At least that might make something productive from this mess.
So here is my mapped out vacation taken from 5 consecutive random emails from the junk bin.
Trip begins in Germany. Looks like a nice enough place. I’ve never been to Germany, perhaps this concept will have some legs after all.
From Germany, we will travel to Lithuania. A town called Vilnius. Not someplace that I would pick, but it would be interesting and certainly different from the places I normally take the kids.
Ah yes. Rome. Never been there and it is on my list. Looks like I will have to bump this planner up above the others I have bookmarked. So far I’m impressed.
Russia isn’t a bad choice. I’m a little confused by the planner picking such a remote town. Moscow would have been higher on my list but maybe I’m missing out on something I don’t know about in Krasnoyarsk. I guess it can’t be that bad near Kazakhstan and Mongonlia. How many places get that as a positive?
Finally we end up in Sydney Australia. Again, probably better than I could have imagined. Perhaps Google’s next generation search software has been stolen and some user has figured out some way to merge travel planning software for the next generation into a spam routing widget. Overall, I must say that I am overly impressed with this little hidden gem of a planner.
Maybe I should write Comcast a thank you notice because hidden in those thousands of returned emails that I have received in the last month, there’s a hidden travel planner that goes head to head with the best sites on the web.
So if the site goes silent again, I guess you have a handful of places to start looking.
