Service Status

Here you will find updates regarding the status of the Runbox email services. We also post updates in the Runbox Forum, where you might find more information about any service irregularities. For support inquiries, please use either the Forum or the Support Center.

19.02.2010

More phishing mails

We just had a new round of mails spoofing support and other admin addresses (some which don't exist) as the sender, asking users to click on a link in the mail. The latest subject is Your profile will be locked in response to a complaint received by the Administration.

This is completely bogus, and again, like before, we will never ask you to downlioad or click on anything in a mail to update your account (renewing aside). And real mails from us address you with your full name and your real email address - spammers never know your name, and often someone else's address will be in the To field, with the rest in Bcc.

Current issues

Spam

Spam continues to be a problem affecting all email services and users, and the amount of spam being sent globally is illustrated by this graph of spam trends. Much of the spam is sent by so-called bot nets of zombie computers that have been infected by computer viruses. See our Anti-spam Info page for more information about spam and how to prevent it.

Spam from your own address

Many users have discovered spam appearing to have been sent from their own address. This does not mean that anyone is using your account without your consent -- it is simply a consequence of the way the email system was designed, which lets anyone send email "from" any address. It's comparable to putting a random return address on an envelope, as it is very difficult to verify who actually sent the email/letter.

This type of email falsification is perpetrated by spammers to make the sender address of spam to appear legitimate, and to avoid receiving the error messages that are generated by non-existent recipient addresses (spammers tend to send large amounts of messages to more or less random addresses).

Additionally, spammers exploit the fact that many email users have whitelisted their own address, which means that spam being sent "from" their own address will categorically be perceived as legitimate email by their spam filter, thus being delivered to their Inbox. We therefore recommend that you do not include your own address in the whitelist (in the Filter section) or in the Contacts section (which is automatically whitelisted).

Please see our Filter help page for more help with handling spam.

Spam bounces sent to Runbox addresses

Unknown spammers have recently been forging Runbox email addresses (randomly, although having a short or first name username increases the chances of such incidents) on their junk mail, causing many of our users to get the bounces. This is just about impossible to prevent, since spammers as a rule use servers which don't require any sort of authentication, and anyone using email can make their mails look like they come from the address of their choice. No one has actually used the forged accounts, in other words. This is an increasing problem, affecting many domains.