PT, contact OzEmail, tell them what happened, include the information I provided, and ask them if Australian law and their own policy permit them to tell you who sent it.
If not, ask them to terminate the account, as what they did almost certainly violates their Acceptable Use Policy.
Unfortunately, there isn't much to stop this sort of thing, other than forcing the IP address into the header by the ISP. But that takes some technical expertise to recognize that it's a forgery and then identify where it came from.
ANYBODY can fake anybody else's e-mail address in this simple-minded (but pretty effective, for the most part) way simply by putting the wrong address in the return address. The Internet e-mail system was designed at a time when everybody on the Internet knew everybody else, and just wouldn't do this. As far as I know, there is nothing being done to fix it!
I have a lot of problems with my live.net domain from users of livenet.net, (an ISP) who get confused about their domain name and type the wrong return address into their browser or e-mail program, or give the wrong address to their friends...
No, I certainly don't approve of this sort of thing. I collected $800 from a spammer who faked live.net return addresses. I found him, spoke with him on the phone, and convinced him that I had enough information to turn over to the FBI. Two money orders showed-up in the mail the next day, purportedly all of his income from the spam scheme (a telephone "party line" - isn't THAT ironic. :) ) I made it clear that if the spam continued I WOULD contact the FBI. Never had a problem again... |
