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Top FAQs

Q: I'm getting bounced email from someone that I never sent any email to, have I been hacked?

A: No. Someone is spoofing your email address and using it as a return address for their emails, often spam. There's really not much you can do about this, while passwords are encrypted its fairly easy to get ahold of email addresses with packet sniffers and worms. Here's a trick you should use whenever you have to have your email address posted anywhere on the web (ie. on newsgroup postings, papers, etc): use "at" instead of @ somewhere in your email address. Example:

not misterfoo@astro.cornell.edu.

but misterfoo at astro.cornell.edu.

This will confound any of the scripts just looking for xxxxxx@xxxxxxx.xxx, while any person that sees this will know enough to substitute @ for at.

Note: It doesn't have to be "at", it can be anything you want. Just make it something that people will recognize as something you added to foil spammers.

Q: How do I setup a email filter for spam?

A: The basic concept is this: You create a filter that 'looks' for {Spam?} in the subject line of your incoming email and you filter it out of you inbox often putting it in its own folder, a folder called, say, spambox. Unfortunately exactly how you accomplish this changes depending on what email client you're using. See the Email link on the sidebar for more info.