Undelivered emails that you never sent?

[MrTibbs]

We've noticed a number of customers reporting receiving undeliverable emails for messages that they never sent in the first place.

This is trick spammers can use which can be very alarming until you realise how it works.
It stems from spammers using your email address in the reply to or from fields.
The result is that any Spam emails which are sent to email addresses that no longer exist are not returned undeliverable to the sender but instead they are delivered to you.

The only consolation is that the returned emails contain the original Spam email header and the Spammer can be traced from it.

If you are the victim of this form of abuse, please forward the entire undelivered email to abuse@uk.tiscali.com so that we can trace its source.

Sometimes this can be the result of a Virus on your PC.
Some viruses propagate themselves by searching your Outlook or Outlook Express address books - as well as your Temporary Internet Files - for any emails it can find on your PC.
The Virus finds both existent and non-existent email addresses and tries to send itself to those email addresses in the hope of infecting another user's PC.
The only real defence against this form of abuse is to have up to date Anti-Virus software running on your PC - and keep it regularly updated.

Once you have identified the messages as spam you can block them in Tiscali webmail . Alternatively you can sign up to Tiscali Securemail which will help by blocking spam and viruses.