someone stole my email address

[alnmike]

Help - please!! I have just received a load of 'undeliverable' return receipts and I didn't recognise the addresses. Upon clicking the original message turned out to be one of those selling various pharmaceuticals, and the sender was [email protected] where www.yyyyyyy.com is my website. Is there anything I can do to stop this?

thanks!!

[Dick Smith]

It happens a lot. Someone has 'spoofed' your email address. The only thing you can do is to change your email address...

I just set up a rule so that they all go into the junk mailbox automatically.

[Clair]

I get a lot of this too.

Try Mailwasher as described in this thread to filter your mail before downloading it.

[YCCMB]

I've had this too. As I posted on here (I think) before, the next stage may be that you find a few days/weeks/months down the line that, because your e-mail has been spoofed, you'll be blacklisted by some servers, particularly businesses, and your genuine e-mails to people will bouce back and be refused. I sent an e-mail to my ISP when this started happening and they replied that whilst they regularly try to get people's addresses un-blacklisted, it can take several weeks or months. I got round it for a month or so by using a hotmail address to send e-mails to people whose servers had blocked me, and there was no problem in me receiving e-mails during all that time. Prepare for a month or so of inconvenience, though, and install something like mailwasher or spamjab to filter out all the spam e-mails (as I said before, I got about 2000 over a 24-hour period one weekend, and then they slowly fizzled to nothing). Just to reassure you, as far as I'm concerned, everything's back to normal now - no lasting problems.

[alnmike]

thanks all for the suggestions - and so promptly!!!

Glad I won't be a pariah for ever!!

[PossumGirl]

From what I understand, the blacklisting is actually linked to the IP that sends the email and not the spoofed address, so you shouldn't have too much trouble.  The spoofed addresses will simply go away after a couple of annoying weeks.

PG

[Pierre ZFP]

The real problem is a bit more serious.  Your PC has been taken over by spyware/malware/virus and is being used as a Zombie (or Robot) to send out thousands of emails.  What you urgently need to do is check your firewall is installed AND TURNED ON !!! get a good virus checker (Norton) and Zonealarm.  I've lost track of the number of machines my son and I have fixed with this problem.  And is Vista more secure? Pah! just gives lots of work to PC repair shops.

[Will]

Not necessarily - if somebody else's computer, with your address in its system, has been infected by malware then the legitimate addresses in its address book can be 'spoofed' - i.e. used as the 'return address' for e-mails sent from elsewhere. So it appears as if you have sent those mails, when you have not. Many ISPs seem to able to differentiate between 'spoofed' and 'real' e-mail addresses, but not all either do so or can be bothered to do so, so the spam will be bounced back to you. There seems to be an awful lot of this about at present; I get a lot, and I know my own computer is 'clean'.

[alnmike]

Thanks - yes, the first thing I did was check the firewall and Internet Security was up to date, and I ran a scan - nothing showed so in this case I guess Will's description is most likely!! It is very irritating - at least I'm not on dial-up as I was last time something like this happened. 

Cheers all!!

[Frank]

Hi

Just a query, I have had an email sent to my email from my email that I didn't send!!  How did this happen?? Is it as Will has said about someone elses computer?? All virus, firewall etc. updated and running so not sure how this has happened.  I don't want to change my email as I use it for business.  Any ideas anyone???  Many thanks in advance

Jetlag

[Pickles]

[quote user="jetlag"]

Just a query, I have had an email sent to my email from my email that I didn't send!!  How did this happen?? Is it as Will has said about someone elses computer?? All virus, firewall etc. updated and running so not sure how this has happened.  I don't want to change my email as I use it for business.

[/quote]

Your email address has been "spoofed" - ie someone has injected the email onto the internet with your address appearing as being the source and recipient.  It will happen from time to time - not much that you can do about it really.

Regards

Pickles

[Frank]

thanks pickles[:D]

[Cassis]

Don't worry if your email has been spoofed - our website email address has been spoofed several times and we get dozens of "mail undeliverable" messages to made-up addresses at our website like ([email protected]) - I just send these autoreplies automatically into the deleted items and do not worry about them.  We have no problem sending or receiving genuine mail and this has been going on for months.  Delete and forget.  It is not a worm if these autoreplies from mail servers are coming to made up addresses at your website.

[alnmike]

Spot on, within about 10 days of my original post the emails dried up. And at no point did I have trouble sending/receiving 'proper' messages!!

[Dick Smith]

Ummm, Pickles - you ought to read the second post in the thread...

[Pickles]

[quote user="Dick Smith"]Ummm, Pickles - you ought to read the second post in the thread...

[/quote]

Yes - should've written "I refer the honourable member to previous post" ... Brain in "skim read" mode, I'm afraid, in one eye and out of the other, or ear, or whatever.

Pickles

[Cassis]

 [:D]

[Dick Smith]

 [:D][:D]

[suein56]

[quote user="Pickles"][quote user="jetlag"]

Just a query, I have had an email sent to my email from my email that I didn't send!!  How did this happen?? Is it as Will has said about someone elses computer?? All virus, firewall etc. updated and running so not sure how this has happened.  I don't want to change my email as I use it for business. [/quote]

Your email address has been "spoofed" - ie someone has injected the email onto the internet with your address appearing as being the source and recipient.  It will happen from time to time - not much that you can do about it really.

Regards
Pickles  [/quote]

I have had 2 of these since yesterday, I have never ever had one before - it is an odd feeling receiving one of these, I don't like it.

Sue

[Frank]

Ditto[:-))]

Did your 'email' have a message with link to email solutions corp by chance??

Jetlag

[Suninfrance]

Whether this actually helps or not, but a friend sent me this e-mail:

Here's a computer trick that's really ingenious in its

simplicity. As you may know, when/if a worm virus gets into your computer it

heads straight for your email address book, and sends itself to everyone in

there, thus infecting all your friends and associates.

 

This trick won't keep the virus from getting into your

computer, but it will stop it from using  your address book to spread further,

and it will alert you to the fact that the worm has gotten into your system.

 

Here's what you do:

 

First, open your address book and click on "new contact," just

as you would do if you were  adding a new friend to your list of email

addresses.

 

In the window where you would type your friend's first name,

type in "A". For the screen name or email address, type "[email protected]". Now, here's what you've done

and why it works: The "name" "A" will be placed at the top of your address book

as entry#1. this will be where the worm will start in an effort to send itself

to all your friends.

 

But, when it tries to send itself to [email protected], it will be  undeliverable

because of the phony email address you entered. If the first attempt fails

(which it will because of the phony address), the worm goes no further and 

your friends will not be infected.

 

Here's the second great advantage of this method: If an email

cannot be delivered, you will be notified of this in your In Box almost 

immediately. Hence, if you ever get an email telling you that an email addressed

to [email protected] could not be

delivered, you know right away that you have it! Pretty slick huh?

 

If everybody you know does this then you need not ever worry

about opening mail from friends.

 

Pass this on to all your friends.

 

[suein56]

[quote user="jetlag"]

Ditto[:-))]

Did your 'email' have a message with link to email solutions corp by chance??

Jetlag [/quote]

No, it didn't.

What happened is my email provider said I had a 'dodgy' email and said 'this is it; here it is; our advice is don't open it, but the decision is yours' so, naturally I didn't open it but deleted it. That was yesterday and I had another one just the same today. But before I deleted them I had a quick glance at the headers and they clearly seemed to be from me to me. Bizarre.

I have also had a 'returned to you as undeliverable as the address does not exist' today, that went in the bin too. I have scanned, ccleaned, thrown evrything I have at my computer etc etc and my system is squeaky clean but still these have appeared - not nice. I just hope they go away soon as people have said they should.

Sue [:@]

[jabriju]

Thanks for the info,

Just wondered though what happens when a friend has a number 1 at the beginning of their email address as the A then goes below this in the address book list?

[Judyc]

I too have been receiving mail from myself.  Three e-mails in the last three days.  Although I have had the 'rejected' e-mail come back to me (supposedly from me, but not) in the past, this is the first time I have  had mail come into my mailbox purporting to be from me.  I do use spamjab so mail gets held, but I do worry about if this could have any effect on mail we try sending in reply to gite enquiries.

To add to this, I have also received two weird e-mails through the contact form on my website (via zyweb) in the last two days.  I thought the reason to use a contact form instead of direct onto my own address was to stop this sort of thing.  These two mail were from motor-finder.iespana.es and contained lots of junk about carburettors!  How have these people picked me up like this?  Any suggestions?

[Suninfrance]

Have you had a look at a previous thread - quite long but has some really good information in it.

http://www.completefrance.com/cs/forums/864022/ShowPost.aspx

Somone on that thread offered to help, so I followed his advice.  I downloaded HiJackThis and sent him the report via PM.  He came back and told me he had identified a couple of files in my registry that needed to be deleted and he guided me through the process.  I don't know if the same principle would work on the strange e-mails you are getting, but it might be worth a try.  Word of warning though, the registry is a particularly dodgy area for those who don't know much about PCs (like me), so before you delete anything from the registry, get sound advice from someone who knows and delete only the files you have been advised to.

I still get the occasional annoying advert if I am using orange.fr as my main page.  I actually got an e-mail from Orange just this week, warning of Cybertheft and I think this should be taken seriously.

However, I switched to Mozilla Firefox as my Browser and have not had a single problem since.  Firefox is free to download from the internet.  It also has a sister programme for e-mails called Thunderbird which I will be trying out shortly.  It automatically transfers your address book from your other mail programme but does not delete the original programme so if you don't get on with Thunderbird, you can always go back to your original programme.

I still get junk e-mail, but I have also dowloaded MailWasher which sits between your server and your computer.  You are allowed a friends list, the option to delete and the option to blacklist.  I find this quite effective and it means I can get rid of the c**p before it hit's my inbox.  MailWasher "learns" who are the goodies and who are the baddies and you have the option to check a box to delete or blacklist.  Some items come up origin blacklisted which means the programme has either learnt from you or it is already recognised as a possibly threat to the security of your computer.

Also - AVG do free Spyware which you can download from the internet.  I was quite shocked when I ran the programme for the first time and the complete system scan (which did, I admit, take some time to finish) found several possible threats and tracking cookies.  However, only was of HIGH risk.  The programme will automatically mark what you should do with these cookies which in my case was to delete the medium risk and quarantine the high risk and then eventually delete it completely. 

If you get adverts suddenly pop up on your screen telling you your computer is at risk or as in my case "tracks of pornographic pictures have been found on your computer, download this programme to clean it up" - DON'T DO IT.  They are 9 times out of 10 spyware.  Use a legitimate programme like Norton, McAfee or even the free AVG. 

It's sad times when you have to do all this just to protect yourself, but it's worth it.

So - summary - try

MailWasher

Mozilla Firefox

AVG AntiSpyware Free

and somewhere on the thread above is the guy who recommended HiJackThis, for registry problems.