Hi there,
Ahmed @ soccerlens recommended I post my issue here...
I'm the editor of a blog and I'm not sure if we've been hacked or what is happening, and where my rights / protection is.
I was contacted today by a PR company regarding a news story posted in my mailout. The story was incorrect, and completely fabricated, and the PR wanted to know where I got my information from as she was being bombarded by journalists who received the mailout.
The thing is, my website doesn't send out a mail out. And I didn't write the story. The mailout says it comes from "mysite"@footballer.com, and goes to a list of many journalists and media contacts with a slightly different version of our tag line, and says the news is brought from us, with our correct url.
There is nowhere on my homepage that anyone can sign up to join my mailing list.
I have looked up the Whois for footballer.com and emailed the person there, but I have no idea what is happening and how to stop this, or even if it was a mistake to email them. Is there anything I can do to stop this? I'm concerned about my site's reputation as the one story I did see was badly written and so false it could get me into trouble, not to mention the privacy issues surrounding my website. What would someone have to gain by doing this, and how can I fix it?
Many thanks, I'm being deliberately vague with my actual site name, because I'm in the "freaked out zone" but will obviously share if it helps this end.
A Sticky Situation
I took a look at the domain in question and it appears to be nothing more than a spam site. What probably happened is that a spammer latched on to your name for whatever reason and sent out some phony press releases on your behalf. It is a pretty common tactic and it rarely succeeds.
The host of the Web site is Verizon Business. You can find their AUP and their abuse contacts here: http://www.verizonbusiness.com/terms/us/aup/
Before you report them for spam though, your going to want to get a copy of the email, probably from the reporter, with full headers. This way you can analyze it and make sure that it came from that server and not somewhere else.
I would go ahead and report the spam site there, they will be interested in it I am certain, but I'd hold off on the email issue until we know for certain where it came from. It is simply too easy to make an email appear to be from somewhere it is not. We won't know until we see the headers.
If you can get that email, feel free to either forward it to my email or post the headers here and I'll have a look at it. Should be trivial to trace it back.
As far as undoing the damage, the best thing you can do right now is put a notice on your site about the email blast that clarifies it was not from you and offers accurate information. I doubt many people will fall for it, but if one person has ten others probably have as well.
Sadly, there is no way "unsend" the email. The best you can do right now is work to undo the damage and pursue the person behind it at least a little.
Hope that this helps!
Thanks very much! I will try
Thanks very much! I will try and get a copy of the IP or full header of the email.
The fake story has now been published in a national newspaper quoting from us so this is NOT good.
Spammers suck!
I've had the same thing - with viruses attached, no less, happen with my domain, email, and URL. You'd be surprised the lengths spammers will go to.
I can only hope people can recognize the difference between my template emails that have a specific voice and the spammers fake/poor grammar/poorly written emails.
Aside from that, chasing these guys could take days and still not result in anything substantial...
Scott
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