bombarded with mail delivery subsystem emails

I use OE for two of my email accounts. In both accounts, I am getting a lot of Mail Delivery Subsystem, MAILER DAEMON, postmaster, and Mail Delivery System emails from addresses I have not sent an email to. I am also getting them when I haven't sent any emails. It started last week when I sent an email to a friend and I received a returned mail notice. I opened it and it looked legitimate. Now, I am getting a variety and the weird part is that they come in marked as read without me opening them. I have preview turned off. All of my other mail comes in un-opened. I can't figure out what is going on. I have Windows XP Pro, IE6, AVG Pro 7, ZA Security Suite 6, SG, Spyware Blaster, Spybot S&D, PG and Pest Patrol. I have run them all and found nothing except for ZA found and quarantined Win32.HostBlock. Now, I haven't received as many mail delivery failure emails as before.

Anyone have any suggestions or know what is causing this?

 

It is spammers (quite likely Alex Polyakov/Leo Kuvayev) using your email address in the From fields of their spam in order to get past spam filters that check for invalid From addresses. When the server bounces their spam (because the account has been closed or doesn't exist), it sends it back to you.

The only thing you can do is report each of these messages (using a service like SpamCop) - since they are unsolicted by you, these qualify as spam also. Responsible server admins should then take steps to stop sending bounces to messages with forged headers. See Bouncebacks: The Hidden Cost of Spam for more on this.

 

Thank you! I will report them.

 

Does anyone know why I am receiving these emails opened? I haven't read any of them.