Ask Leo! by Leo A. Notenboom

Someone's sending from my email address! How do I stop them?!

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OK - here's a twist. Some one has been using MY email address (15 yr old account I use for filling out web forms and registrations, etc) on application forms for the last 2-3 years for things like home loans, bank accounts, Pay Pal, ebay, and even notification of service on their car. I have actually located the home address and parcel ID, phone number, and even the VIN number on their car (Same state 20 miles from me). Interestingly enough, the name on the house is my name. I determined that my email account has not been breached and no fraudlulent inquiries have been made into my personal financial accounts using MY SSN. One Bank actually confirmed today that an account that I was receiving information on, that was NOT MINE, did indeed have my email address on it. So - it could really be someone with my name just using it (why?), or trying haplessly to break my password, or something. In any case got a suggestion? Not sure if this criminal or not ??? I am getting tired of sending the emails to fraud departments though and I hesitate to communicate to this person directly.

Posted by: Mike at January 28, 2009 5:28 PM

I also got some emails that supposedly were sent by me and had bounced. These emails had me as a the sender. I used an IP tracing software and found that different persons in different countries were using my email address as the sender. I traced on email to a sender in Brazil, another to a sender in Germany and another to a sender in the US!! How they managed to forge my email address as the sender is what is puzzling me. Oh yeah, the usual use of my forged email was to flog sexual enhancement products. I lost a number of lady friends because one, they were embarrassed by the spam and two, they thought I was involved with porn!! Is there any legal remedy to deal with these [edited]?

There may technically be legal remedy (contact a lawyer or law enforcement), but in practical terms it's not worth the cost and effort. "From: spoofing" is trivially easy to do. Those IPs you traced were probably botnet-infected machines where the owners also have no idea it's happening.
- Leo
07-May-2009

Posted by: Leo [not the "Ask Leo" Leo] at May 5, 2009 6:47 PM

i changed my password after my account was hacked 2 days ago and this morning i found out that it was hacked again;(

Posted by: Dalal etoum at May 25, 2009 11:23 PM

Someone or maybe a virus has been sending spam photographs to all the people on my contact list!! (hotmail account)
And this happens as soon as I sign in to my account! Some CLICK-CLICK sound starts coming as if e-mails are being sent to all my friends , and I can even see the messages in the Sent folder .
I tried changing my password several times a day but that did'nt HELP!
I had this account for almost 7yrs now & it was extremely IMP. to me :(
So ultimately I closed the account today , But as soon as I did that they said that your account would be available for 275 days! & if u try to sign in (which ofcourse the hacker or virus may do ) it'll ACTIVATE again!
Please HELP me on this matter ASAP!

Posted by: Damz at July 2, 2009 11:26 PM

Hi,I have a different type of problem. I am using Dumeter to monitor my network activity. When I send an email through my outlook especially with attachments,I noticed that the same email was sent to another destination. I think somebody is copying whatever I send from my email through Outlook. Can you guide me how I can find the destination address of these emails? I tried to use some email tracing programs but they didn't work out.

Posted by: Volkan at August 18, 2009 8:32 PM

hey someone type in my email address for a account and i got something about acvating it do i just delete the message because some one tyep my email in to that account that i dont want

Posted by: kaleb at September 3, 2009 12:50 PM

So much like everyone else, someone used by email address to send spam to everyone on my contact list. I changed my password, but still whenever I start a new email or hit reply to reply to an email sent to me, the spam message shows up in the new message I'm typing. I erase it before I start typing, but I'd like to fix my email so it stops automatically popping up at the start of all my emails. Help!

It sounds like your machine is infected with a virus of some sort.
Leo
12-Sep-2009

Posted by: Gina at September 8, 2009 8:16 PM

i'm a 75 yr. old senior and someone using my e-mail acct sent bad/treatening e-mails to my pastor. it got me in trouble with the whole church. the pastor beleaves i sent them. haven't been back since. no one will listen to the virus story. my sister believed virus' were "bug". i was told by my physical therepest that the dumbest thing we ever did, was to call "them" virus. i agree. if i hadn;t been so upset when i was talking about virus, my sister says, why are you giving them brains?

Posted by: SHURLEY FLOWERS at September 12, 2009 7:21 PM

When I checked my e-mail inbox today, I found that there were about 20 "Delivery Status Notification (failure)" messages. When I opened them, they all contained the same message, and it seems they got sent to everyone in my contact list (200+ addresses).
I checked my "sent" messages list, and there was no trace that I (or someone who might have hacked my account) had even sent the messages in the first place. The only reason I noticed that this had happened is because some of the addresses in my contact list don't exist anymore and the emails got bounced back to me.
I changed my password, but it seems more likely this is a virus problem. I have an up-to-date virus scanner, and it hasn't picked any up. Any ideas?

Posted by: Appu at September 14, 2009 1:31 AM

hi..someone used my email & password to send an 'obscene' email to themselves..they are now taking me to court over this..i DID NOT SEND IT..i contacted my ISP they cannot help me as it was sent thru windows live account..how do i prove this in court..they deleted it from my 'sent' box but not from my 'deleted item's this is how i found it! i am furious! i need to prove it was sent from what ever computer they used & not mine at home as they dont reside with me even..can you please help..i need to prove them wrong..police cannot help it is a civil matter not criminal i asked them...any suggestions?

You need to talk to a tech-savvy lawyer. There may be ways to get the information (if the information you need exists at all), but I'm guessing you'll need a court order to do so.
Leo
24-Sep-2009

Posted by: DEBBIE at September 23, 2009 8:33 AM
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