The Work at Home Scam Blog

I’ve been getting a lot of bounced emails lately. It wouldn’t be a big deal, except they are ones that I did not send.

After inspecting a few of them and finding that the attached emails were spam, I got worried. I thought that despite all of my efforts to keep my computer secure and free of junkware, it had still somehow become a spam zombie. For those who haven’t heard that term, it’s a computer that has been infected by a virus or trojan that causes it to send junk mail on the infector’s behalf.

So of course I decided to investigate. Come to find out, it is just a new kind of spam. Spammers send spam emails to addresses that do not exist, with your email address in the reply-to field. Then the spam bounces back to you. This causes it to bypass most spam filters. Many Internet users, such as myself, will be curious as to what this mysterious bounced email is, and read the attachments.

If you get email like this, do not open the attachments. If they contain images, they can let the spammer know that your email address is in fact valid, and you will in turn get more spam.

It blows my mind the lengths that spammers go to in order to find new ways to get their junk mail out. I just don’t get it. I know that I totally ignore anything that reeks of spam, as do most other email users I know. There must be people out there that are making it worth their while, or they wouldn’t continue. Don’t be one of those people.

There is no shortage of scammers out there who want your money. But there are just as many, if not more, who are dying for your email address.

Spam comes in many forms, about many subjects. A substantial amount of it is trying to sell prescription drugs and other such spam-typical stuff. But there’s also plenty of it pertaining to work at home jobs. Please don’t give anyone who sends you unsolicited email the time of day. If they had something wonderful to offer, they wouldn’t have to use illegal and unethical means to get people’s attention.

There are plenty of methods available to block spam. Many virus scanners come packaged with spam blocking software. My ISP includes it with my Internet service so that most of it never even reaches my inbox. If you get mail from your website, there should be measures in place from your hosting provider that you can utilize to reduce spam.

If you still have spam getting through, check out SpamCop.net. It takes the guesswork out of reporting spam. You can register for free, and then when you get spam you can put the headers and body of the message into a form on their site. They then put together a report and send it to everyone that needs to know about it for you.