Google spam backscatter

If you have received a “Your mail could not be delivered” bounce notification, a “Your mail contained a virus” notice, or a request to confirm your signup request for a mailing list you’ve never heard of, you’ve probably received backscatter. There is also spam backscatter when spammers use your domain in their activities.

Some time ago, when virus outbreaks where very common, we did had a lot of backscatter from mail servers that intercepted the virus. Mail administrators where so concerned, or may I say stupid, to send out these notifications to the sender, most often to spoofed email addresses.

Today, we have Google backscatter:

 Hello souillet1957@**********.com,

We’re writing to let you know that the group that you tried to contact (designateh) doesn’t exist. There are a few possible reasons why this happened:

* You might have spelled or formatted the group name incorrectly.
* The owner of the group removed this group, so there’s nobody there to contact.

If you have questions about this or any other group, please visit the Google Groups Help Center at http://groups.google.com/support.

Thanks, and we hope you’ll continue to enjoy Google Groups.

The Google Groups Team

Thank you Google.