Bounce-back for emails I didn't send
Spammers want to send email that looks like it’s coming from someone who can be trusted. They want it to look like it’s coming from you -- and you end up getting the bounce notifications.
I keep getting a “cannot deliver email” message from someone I didn’t send anything to and don’t even have in my contacts list. Why is that, and what do I do?
What do you do? Nothing. There’s nothing you can do.
Why is it happening? In a word: spammers. Let’s look at what they’re up to.
Why did I get a bounce message?
Bounces for emails you didn’t send are the result of spammers trying to get people to open their spam and click on the links in the spam message.
Spammers want their email to look like it’s coming from someone the reader might trust. In other words, they want it to look like it’s coming from you. “From spoofing” allows them to do exactly that. They write messages using your email address and maybe even your name in the “From:” address. It’s easy to do, and spammers have been doing it for a long time.
If the email address the spammer sent it to belongs to a real person, they may see email that looks like it came from you. They probably have no idea who you are, and may mark it as spam.
Since spammers are simply blasting email out to huge databases of email addresses, they have no idea whether those addresses are legitimate or not. If they send email to an address that no longer exists, never existed,1 or recognizes the message as spam, it bounces automatically.
The email delivery system says, “Hey, I can’t deliver this email; I’m going to return it to the sender.” Because the sender information on the “From:” line looks like it was you, you get the bounce message.
None of this happened on your machine or your account. In fact, it had nothing to do with you other than that your email address appeared in a spammer’s database.
Steps to take
Unfortunately, there’s nothing we can do to stop it.
All you can really do is mark the bounce message as spam and let your email program handle it from there.
You weren’t involved, it’s not your fault, and there’s nothing you can do.
However, if several of your contacts complain you’re sending them spam, it might be something more.
From the sound of your scenario — getting a bounce from someone you have never heard of from some address you never sent email to — the best thing to do is mark it as spam and get on with your life.