As mentioned in a previous post, backscatter spam (also known as outscatter, misdirected bounces, blowback or collateral spam) has been eating our mail server’s lunch lately and causing our customers no end of headaches as they wade through inbox messages that appear to be coming from their own accounts, but is in actuality spam from a foreign source

For those of you who don’t know what backscatter is, Wikipedia explains it best:

Backscatter … is a side-effect of e-mail spam, viruses and worms, where email servers receiving spam and other mail send bounce messages to an innocent party. This occurs because the original message’s envelope sender is forged to contain the e-mail address of the victim. A very large proportion of such e-mail is sent with a forged From: header, matching the envelope sender.

PCS has recently implemented counter-measures that should significantly reduce the amount of backscatter our customers receive.  If after a few days you do not see an improvement in this condition, please drop us a line and we’ll take a closer look at your account.