We were under attack here (in New Zealand) a month or two back, with the sort of e-mail that tells you the mailman or postmaster has some wrongly addressed mail and whatever you sent didn't go. Yes, we sometimes have that problem, especially with old addresses, but this usually only happens once or twice. We started getting 3 or 4 a day, then 10 the next day, then 20, then 50 until finally we were getting 3,000 in one day! This was actually happening in the middle of the night, NZ time, while we were asleep and our computers were turned off!
The next thing that happened was the email wouldn't work - we couldn't get on the net - xtra was not recognising us - it was as if someone had hijacked our account and changed the password.
We contacted Telecom and, after an argument with the 'expert' on the other end, he changed our password to something we could use and we were back online. But we missed some regular mail that should have arrived.
That was OK for about a week, when it happened again!
Same procedure, different 'expert', changed our password again, back online again. But it was obvious that someone had been using our account as a front for sending out their spam in our name.
In desperation we arranged a new e-mail address through another company and advised all our friends and contacts.
It took 5 or 6 calls to Telecom and insisting on speaking to a supervisor before it was stopped.
It's still a bother, we're still getting the usual medical product and begging for money type scam but the Postmaster stuff has stopped, for now.
We think the server had a problem - someone had infiltrated the system and was trying to harvest the world from our address.
Hopefully they've gone somewhere else now - but I hope they're not using mudcat.
Robyn