alnmike Posted February 24, 2007 Share Posted February 24, 2007 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 xxxxx@yyyyyyyy.com where www.yyyyyyy.com is my website. Is there anything I can do to stop this?thanks!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dick Smith Posted February 24, 2007 Share Posted February 24, 2007 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Clair Posted February 24, 2007 Share Posted February 24, 2007 I get a lot of this too.Try Mailwasher as described in this thread to filter your mail before downloading it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
YCCMB Posted February 24, 2007 Share Posted February 24, 2007 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alnmike Posted February 24, 2007 Author Share Posted February 24, 2007 thanks all for the suggestions - and so promptly!!!Glad I won't be a pariah for ever!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PossumGirl Posted February 25, 2007 Share Posted February 25, 2007 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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pierre ZFP Posted February 26, 2007 Share Posted February 26, 2007 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Will Posted February 26, 2007 Share Posted February 26, 2007 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'. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alnmike Posted February 26, 2007 Author Share Posted February 26, 2007 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!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frank Posted March 26, 2007 Share Posted March 26, 2007 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 advanceJetlag Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pickles Posted March 26, 2007 Share Posted March 26, 2007 [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.RegardsPickles Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frank Posted March 26, 2007 Share Posted March 26, 2007 thanks pickles[:D] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cassis Posted March 26, 2007 Share Posted March 26, 2007 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 (anygibberishyoulike@ourwebsite.com) - 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
alnmike Posted March 26, 2007 Author Share Posted March 26, 2007 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!! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dick Smith Posted March 27, 2007 Share Posted March 27, 2007 Ummm, Pickles - you ought to read the second post in the thread... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pickles Posted March 27, 2007 Share Posted March 27, 2007 [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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cassis Posted March 27, 2007 Share Posted March 27, 2007 [:D] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dick Smith Posted March 27, 2007 Share Posted March 27, 2007 [:D][:D] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
suein56 Posted March 27, 2007 Share Posted March 27, 2007 [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.RegardsPickles [/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 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Frank Posted March 27, 2007 Share Posted March 27, 2007 Ditto[:-))]Did your 'email' have a message with link to email solutions corp by chance??Jetlag Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Suninfrance Posted March 27, 2007 Share Posted March 27, 2007 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 "AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA". 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 AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA, 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 AAAAAAA@AAA.AAAA 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. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
suein56 Posted March 27, 2007 Share Posted March 27, 2007 [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 [:@] Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jabriju Posted March 30, 2007 Share Posted March 30, 2007 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? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Judyc Posted March 30, 2007 Share Posted March 30, 2007 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? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Suninfrance Posted March 31, 2007 Share Posted March 31, 2007 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.aspxSomone 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 - tryMailWasherMozilla FirefoxAVG AntiSpyware Freeand somewhere on the thread above is the guy who recommended HiJackThis, for registry problems. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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