In need of expert e-mail address help
 

Someone recently obtained an e-mail address that uses my real name. They then used it to send e-mails as if they came from me.

Is there any way of tracking down who did this?

DEFPOTEC

One thing that you can check is in a text version of the total email message that will give you the path that the message was sent through. In Outlook Express it is gained by :-

Selecting Email Message
Select :- File
Properties
Detail (TAB at top)

This gives you a text version of the total email and you can then view it in Notepad by selecting the "Message Source" button. The top section of the file shows the path taken by the email and the senders details. It can then be possible to back track by contacting the organisations/companies that the email came through, a lot of effort and they probabily would not help to much.

There are still sites on the web that allow for anonymous emails, where the sender is hidden by a third party and it is impossible to determine the sender (these are used a lot for sending info to the newsgroups !!!!). Not much use I know.

The other thing to do it to automatically delete the emails when they are received (possible in Outlook Express) so that they do not cause any problems.

Always have a better day than yesterday

Could this be someone who actually shares the same name as you? Or is it someone who is faudulently trying to impersonate you?

Who is the ISP involved (hotmail, yahoo, freeserve etc) as they may be able to help if you aproach them regarding fraudulent or emabarrassing mails.

Other than that, you could let everyone on your address book know about the problem and make sure they know that the emaila ddres that appears to be yours is in fact not so.

Thanks for the help.

It is someone who is fraudulently trying to impersonate me.

In that case you should definitely contact the ISP that he's using and complain - most ISPs are responsible organisations and will take appropriate action. Good luck!

(If that doesn't work, you could post the email addy that he's using and invite PPRuNers to "avalanch" him!)

I will try the ISP. Thanks.