Spambots Attacking Auto-Responders
Dear Beza.Net Customer:
In an effort to keep customers
informed about new threats, Beza.net
is releasing this security alert to all customers. Please read this entire
notice to see how Beza.net is protecting your account and if applicable,
please follow the recommendations listed below.
Overview:
At Beza.net, we are constantly working on behalf of our customers
to ensure their account is safe and secure from hackers, spammers,
viruses,
maleware, etc. Recently, there has been a large increase of spam bots
attacking e-mail auto-responders on the Internet.
Details:
E-mail auto-responders respond indiscriminately to forged and legitimate
email. Spam and virus messages almost always contain forged ‘From:’ or ‘Reply
to:’ email addresses of innocent third party victims.
When an auto-responder receives one of these forged messages, the
auto-responder replies back to the forged ‘From:’ or ‘Reply to:’ address.
Because of this, the auto-responder is now redistributing spammer’s
junk mail to innocent third parties.
As a result, the innocent third party mail service provider (i.e. AOL,
EarthLink, Yahoo, etc.) can blacklist your domain on the Internet. Once
a domain is blacklisted, the majority of mail servers will not accept
any further emails Beza.net sends out on your behalf and/or your domain.
In extreme cases, the third party victim’s mail server can get “bounce-bombed" with
misdirected mail, preventing them from receiving legitimate mail. When
this happens, the third party victim’s Internet Service Provider
(i.e. AOL, Bellsouth, EarthLink, Verizon, Yahoo, etc.) can take legal
actions against you and/or your company if you are working on behalf
of an employer.
Actions Taken:
In an effort to protect all customers from having their domains blacklisted
and/or legal actions brought by third party victims due to this weakness
of auto-responders redirecting spam messages to forged ‘From:’ or ‘Reply
to:’ addresses, Beza.net has temporarily disabled auto-responders
for all email accounts.
Recommendations:
There are several recommendations to customers below based on traditional
legitimate auto-responder usage:
Vacation Auto-Responders: Typically used when someone is going away
on vacation or is going to be out of the office without access to their
e-mail. Beza.net recommends customers to either inform your normal correspondents
of your absence before you depart and/or let a co-worker answer your
email in your absence. If you wish to dispense information via email,
respond directly to the sender after you have verified that it is NOT
a spam message.
Receipt Confirmation Auto-Responders: Typically used to inform sender
that their message has been received and will be responded too shortly.
Beza.net recommends customers to instead, review each and every message
incoming to their mailbox and ONLY respond to ones which seem not to
be spam.
Note:
Beza.net encourages customers to report all spam messages to our Abuse
Department. Please forward the entire spam message with full headers
to abuse@beza.net.
Never report spam messages to your personal
Internet Service Provider (i.e. AOL, EarthLink, Yahoo, etc.) which
Beza.net forwards from your email account hosted at Beza.net. Reporting
spam messages we forward per your forwarding rule from your Beza.net
web hosting account to your ISP
will only result in Beza.net
getting blocked by your ISP who will never accept any future emails
(legitimate and/or possible forwarded spam messages) from
reaching
you.
If you are unsure where the spam message originated, contact
us and we can help you.
As always, if any customer has any questions or concerns, please don’t
hesitate to contact us 24/7 via email, live chat or by phone. All of
us here at Beza.net are dedicated to you and your business success.
Thank you,
Admin
System Integrity and Security Dept
Beza, Inc.
Phone: 1-202-822-6800
Toll Free: 1-800-505-9774
Website: http://www.beza.net
|