Trouble with Email

[Rather be Gardening]

A query for the computer experts - over the past couple of days I've noticed a very large number of 'failed delivery' emails to one of my email addresses referring to emails I haven't sent - looking at the details it all seems to be spam. Could someone be hijacking my puter/email address? I have Spamfighter, an AVG security suite, and Spyfighter, which run daily sweeps.

[stickyb]

(apologies to the good Captain K)

It is probably a virus infecting the machine of someone who has you in their address book. The virus is then trying to replicate by sending out emails, and picking a random name from the address book to "spoof" as the sender.

So you did not send out the mails, but you get the failure messages.

Sometimes you can track the IP of the sender from the failure notice.

[kwachon]

Definately a virus on another computer that has your email address on it. As long as your virus checker keeps an eye on incoming emails all should be well.

[Keef]

It's worth tracking the origin of the spoofs if you can - you may be able to alert a friend to the fact he has the virus.

I've spent a fair amount of time educating a delightful but unworldly archdeacon about the virus he had, how he got it, and how he was spreading it.

[kenhughes]

Spammers :mad: often use genuine email addresses in the 'From:' field of an email in a bid to beat the (mainly useless) spam traps that some ISPs run their incoming emails through.

When I was admin of a relatively small mail server a few years ago, I got more bounced emails telling me an address to which someone from my domain had tried to send an email, didn't exist, than I did actual spam emails. Needless to say, the address at my domain had sent no such emails.

There are two options, 1. bounce the bounce emails back to the admin of the server that sent them to you, or 2. (my favored method), delete them and forget about them.

The chance of someone hijacking your computer to send emails is a possibilty, but if you have a decent firewall, it's a rare possibilty.

[BOAC]

a delightful but unworldly archdeacon about the virus he had, how he got it, and how he was spreading it. - reminds me of an irreverent joke.......................:)

[Rather be Gardening]

Thanks for the replies - much appreciated.