FAQ

Email
General > Why do I get errors for emails I didn\'t send?

These errors or failure notices are the result of spammers and / or viruses that use your email address for sending spam.

The SMTP protocol is used for the communication between different mail servers. Your mail client sends emails using the SMTP protocol too, and communicates with the PriorWeb mail server or the one of your provider. The protocol, however, does not offer any protection or check against falsified email addresses. The contents of the 'From' header can easily be set to any email address, including yours.

This flaw is often abused by spammers. They use your email address as the sender of the email. When the spam mail is rejected or bounced by the recipient, it will generate an error email (failure notice), that you will receive, as you are the alleged sender of that email.

Unfortunately there is no global solution for this problem. There are some techniques, but they have to be implemented on every mail server connected to the internet. We advise you to remove and ignore these failure notices.