Today I recieve an E-mail that I thought was slightly distasteful and it came from a name I was not familiar with. So I wrote back asking who sent it and recieved a really weird reply. It was from MY E-mail address (in other words ?I was the sender) and threatened to send a note to "all my friends" from that address and tell them that I am gay. Most Bizarre.

I just wondered if whoever sent it got my e-mail from here. I have had the same e-mail address since about 1995 and have never had anything like this happen before.

Anyway, I did hear about some Airline Captain's Son doing the same sort of thing on PPRuNe a few months ago.

Has this happened to anyone else on PPRuNe

Never heard of that before.

I protect my home e-mail address by NEVER giving it out on the web.

I have set up a Hotmail account, and always use that one when asked ( required ) to provide one. I always say "no" to marketing.

My Hotmail account gets about 50 spam email every day. Most of these are bulk blocked by Hotmails checker, but a lot still get through.

I prefer them to go there though, instead of my home.

I don't know what your solution is, but I wouldn't give out my e-mail address to anybody I don't personally know.

Hope your troubles end soon.

I've had some emails sent to me under the same name as my actual address, only with a different server address ie okeydokey@<hidden>
I've always steered well clear. Instant delete...

Spoofing the from address in an e-mail is simple. Go to the Accounts (or equivalent) tab in your mail program and you can enter anything you like which will then appear in all your outgoing. The IP address is harder to fake, but it can be done too.

Using a free web-based mail address is good protection against spam. But your real address can still be discerned. Many trojans or viruses 'raid' the address book of infected computers, meaning if your address is in anybody's .pab it can be exposed if they are infected.

Happened to me. Best course is then to notify the postmaster at your ISP. They may be able to trace the origin (unlikely) but at the very least you're covered if things take an ugly turn.

Lot of sad gits out there in webland, don't let them get to you.

Yup, you are right, not being a hacker I have never tried it before but I have just e-mailed this bloke back (testing to another of my accounts first) using HIS e-mail address.

I guess it is as simple as that, quite scary for a moment though.

As I said before I have very little trouble with spam perhaps because it ISN'T a hotmail account, or perhaps because I don't surf in the true sense anymore. I have various web sites that I go to for work etc and that is about it.

Thanks

Okay so here is the story so far…if anyone is interested.

I got in contact (through Friends reunited) with a Guy I was at school with 30 years ago. He now lives in Aus and he sent me (and all his mates) a mail. The Guy that sent me the first e-mail that sparked this thread was one of those mates. When I wrote asking who he is he just changed his E-mail address to mine and sent back a note saying he was “In my computer” and would e-mail my friends that I am Gay. Now being a fat married old geezer with two kids doesn’t necessarily preclude one from being Gay, and I really don’t care if people think I am, but it seems obvious to me that THIS GUY DOES, why else would he think it is a threat.

Well, thanks to Paper Tiger I know how he did it, I also know how to do it back to him.

So, I can ignore it, or how about this. Suppose I change my E-mail details to his and e-mail all his friends with my undying love for one of them? Or would that just be too spiteful?

There are a couple of things that I have had reasonable success with, so they are worth trying.
First one is to forward a copy of the mail to the address abuse@<hidden>, where domainwhatever is the domain of the person who sent you the bad e-mail. So if you get one from somebody using a hotmail account then forward it to abuse@<hidden> Trick can be to find the actual domain, especially if they have "spoofed" the return address as you have demonstrated how to do.
Second thing is to go to the web site www.abuse.net (http://www.abuse.net) and check out all the tools etc there. They are friendly and useful.

Hope this helps, let me know if you need anything more.
Cheers

New Bloke,
I think friendsreunited take a dim view of abuse of their system, too (ok - so the culprit wasn't directly one of their users). May be worth dropping them an email.

NB

Let it go. He is not 'in your computer'. If you respond or otherwise escalate that's exactly what he wants - someone to 'play' with. You may get a couple more probes - ignore them and there's a 99% chance he'll go away. If not then the above advice re: abuse@<hidden> and postmaster@<hidden> should get results. He doesn't seem to be smart enough to cover his tracks, luckily.

As a general rule it's not worth replying to any suspect email anyway. Many spam programs randomly generate email addresses and mail to these - by replying you are just alerting them that they've found an active account.

The same applies to spam where there is an "unsubscribe" option. Despite how honest this appears, once again it's just a mechanism to alert the spammer that they've found an active email account.

You are all right of course, I really should just ignore it, he hasn't written back and I think I may have been a touch too sensitve to start with......


But wouldn't it be fun to "do him" as he threatened to "do me"....from a hotmail account of coures...


He he :D :D :D

Mmm?

Now you've just given us a wake-up call about FriendsReunited - Just thinking of some of the people I went to school with, one of the good things about leaving school was that they were out of your life for ever...