SPAM from my brother?

[Jimmy Macintosh]

I received an email from my brother trying to sell me a 3g phone.

I checked the headers and it is from his address, but it's signed with his full Christian name rather than the shortened version that he normally uses.

My question is, I'm assuming someone has some spyware that has harvested a bunch of email addresses.

Is it more likely his machine, my machine or another, is there anyway to tell? I've told him to run adaware, but would this catch it? I've run it myself and will know the results when I get home.

Is there a chance it's my machine, the internet seems to be slower than it should, what's the best way to find out if I'm being used as a server?

Odd I know, but I've never experienced this problem before and am curious on the best ways to fix it.

Thanks.

[Jimmy Macintosh]

Thanks, that's actually interesting.

It stills begs the question, how'd they get my brothers address (it's an odd one involving numbers) and how did they get mine AND associate the two?

[rgbrock1]

It sounds like someone, of a dubious nature, hijacked your brother's computer.
And by doing so obtaining your email address, and anyone else for that matter, would be relatively easy.

Your bro's computer may very well be at risk. He needs to straighten that our, pronto.

[frostbite]

In my experience, Adaware is not very effective.

Malwarebytes and/or Spybot are much more likely to find something nasty.

[Saab Dastard]

It stills begs the question, how'd they get my brothers address (it's an odd one involving numbers) and how did they get mine AND associate the two?

It's pretty typical virus behaviour - go to the email application and email to the address list: hence the link between you and your brother is the address book.

SD