[Discuss] e-mails with a "from" address that is of some concern

[Alan W. Irwin]

We have recently started seeing spam that purports to be sent from our
own computer, e.g., <somename>@<FQDN> where FQDN is the fully
qualified (and quite unique) local name I happen to give my computer in
/etc/hosts.

As far as I know, I have never leaked that fully qualified name out in
e-mail or anywhere else.

So I am wondering how spammers have figured it out?  Is there some
service I should stop that is broadcasting the local name of my box
for the IP address that Shaw has assigned me?

My firewall rules are pretty strict so that all connections initiated
from outside the box are simply dropped so if there is such a service
that broadcasts the fully qualified name of my local box, I don't
think it would work, but I may have missed something.

Alan
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Alan W. Irwin

Astronomical research affiliation with Department of Physics and Astronomy,
University of Victoria (astrowww.phys.uvic.ca).

Programming affiliations with the FreeEOS equation-of-state
implementation for stellar interiors (freeeos.sf.net); the Time
Ephemerides project (timeephem.sf.net); PLplot scientific plotting
software package (plplot.sf.net); the libLASi project
(unifont.org/lasi); the Loads of Linux Links project (loll.sf.net);
and the Linux Brochure Project (lbproject.sf.net).
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Linux-powered Science
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