Why am I getting spam from myself?

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Leo,
Thank you for responding to my question. I wish we could do something about this, but now I know that it isn't unusual or serious. Maybe one day hotmail will be able and willing to do something about this problem. J. Haring

There's one way to redirect those messages to the SPAM folder, as long as you use Outlook 2007. Create a RULE to apply on messages arriving. The rule is messages from myname@myDomain and sent to myname@myDomain move to SPAM. You may choose to delete, instead of moving to SPAM, but I like to double check.

Atleast they are not within the valid messages anymore.

renato

You might suggest to J. Haring that he/she get a gmail address from Google. Google email has an automatic spam drop that works well. It also learns from the user's actions which additional email is classified as spam. Works great for me.

It is harmless until Yahoo cancels your email account for "SPAM Abuse" because somebody was spoofing your email address....which happened to me.

Why not have a do not e-mail list much like the do not call list? Most of the opt out options in e-mails don't work,they just bring me to a blank page.I am wondering why more of us (people on the net) don't get together and push for something more to be done.I mean my ISP has already blocked my account once for spamming and I knew nothing about it until I tried to get online and was blocked.I had to call them just to get my internet back and was told if it happens again my account will be canceled.I mean all this has gotten way out of hand and no one even wants to try to do something about it!!!
Dave

Good article. I have a Gmail account and I think that they do a great job of preventing spam, but I also get annoyed by the e-mails from myself, that are really not from myself.

This is even doubly annoying, because sometimes I do send myself. Like sending myself an attachment at work, so that when I get home I can quickly download it. Gmail is simple to use because they give you up to 20MB for an attachment.

But Google also added a cool little feature that may be beneficial here. You can add a "+" and any verbiage after the "+" as a tag to your e-mail address. In other words, you can address an e-mail to a gmail user like this: user+thisisatag@gmail.com. How this can be used is to send e-mails to yourself by addressing it as self+fromself@gmail.com. When you register your id at a site, register the e-mail address of self+ebay@gmail.com. This address will appear in the "to" field and you can easily create a filter to grab these and labels to them. Anything sent to you that doesn't have a label will either be caught by your spam filter or end up in your inbox and easily spotted.

The other option would be your own domain and creating "forwarding" e-mail addresses that you would register in much the same way as i described above. In other words, ebay@mydomain.com or paypal@mydomain.com or any other site you subscribe to. This will help you to quickly separate the legit e-mails from the false one's. It's tedious but stops all the guessing. The key is switching all of your existing accounts.

Just my 2-cents.

How often you will send an email to yourself, I keep my sent emails in my sent folder for records, I never cc myself, so, why not just block the email sent from myself?

So, i get that there isnt anything that anyone can do about this, but let me get this straight, i'm sending a bunch of people mail from my address, right? can't i ask my mail provider to monitor my account activity or something? I'm a little more concerned that i'm sending a bunch of people dumb stuff.

There are some things you can do. There is a little program called Xxxxbully (xx out because we don't want to advertise for anyone) that will elimininate most spam, even those with your own name on it. This is if you don't "whitelist" yourself. (Not always desired though). Most email failures will come from your isp server, "service@youisp.com"
Now for users with Outlook or outlook express, you have a pop&smtp account. Contact your isp about secure SMTP server. This requires you to have a username and password to send email OUT. The account information you put in originally was only for RECEIVING your email. Anyone can send our your email server.
Now if your a yahoo or hotmail user, you just gotta lie there an take it. Many have a premium email feature that allows you to whitelist and create filters too.

Just a side note. Here are the top money makers;
*Pills (viagra, cialis etc)
*Gambeling
*Porn
*email address collection so they can send you the above.

Spammers love chain letters. They can get one email from one person, (from a hijacked computer) and it is lible to have 100 email addresses!!!
So from now on, repeat after me, "I will learn to use the BCC button". Why? It hides everyone's email address in the body of the email.
From this last chain email I got, I could make 100 dollars from selling YOUR email addresses.

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