Someone's sending email that looks like it's from me to my contacts, what can I do?

And if it is a virus, switching your email client might help.Like from outlooke express to thuneerbird. For example if a virus hijacks your Outlook express account and sends out spam and/or viruses to your contacts list. If this is the case simple switching to another email account won't work, you need to uninstall it or the virus will continue to exploit it in the background. Also, I'm not really sure if you can actually deinstall outlook express since as long as the address book is still there the viruses can still exploit it. You might have to export the address list to t-bird and delete all of your outlook express addresses manually.

PS don't use your real mother's maiden name or first pet etc. use a word as difficult to guess as your password and keep a copy safely hidden.

I get spam almost daily from "myself". At least the "from" tag is that part of my email address that precedes the @. Not a problem, in fact it seems self-defeating to fake the source as the same as the destination.

I too was "hacked" in my Yahoo account. Another user e-mail address was added and my password was changed. It happened at 8:45 PM (I received confirmation msgs from Yahoo) and fortunately I caught it early the next morning.

Using Yahoo's secret responses to security questions I was able to regain my account and change the password.

However, my home computer address book was Not hacked but it was my Yahoo address book that was used (I haven't used it for years and forgot about it). I emptied my Yahoo address book.

I POP3 my mail to my computer (I don't believe in leaving any of my data in the cloud). So far my spam count has not risen but ...

Hope this helps. rgds, Mike

My yahoo e-mail was hacked several months ago. When I contacted yahoo, they were no help at all. An e-mail was sent out to everyone in my address book about some fantastic sale. I'm sure the link in the e-mail contained a virus. Luckily, a copy went to my computer literate brother, who immediately recognized that I would never send out such a sloppy e-mail with poor grammar and misspelled words. I was able to contact everyone and alert them not to open the e-mail within minutes of the time it went out. My address book had disappeared, so I typed a hard copy into a word processing program, and when I send e-mails, I simply copy and post the addresses into the e-mail. It happened once again recently, but the only address in my address book was one for Bit Defender which is an anti-virus program. I have other e-mail accounts I use for important correspondence. They do not contain any address books.

Leo,

I think the email account does not need to be compromised for this to happen... but correct me if I am wrong:

1st, many people still keep sending emails to loads of people in CC rather than using BCC. That makes those emails easy picking and ripe for the harvest by bots... and they will be added, alongside yours, to spam lists, etc.

2nd, spammers these days have ways (a simple script can do this I think you mention it and it's called spoofing) to have any email inserted in the sent from... and sent to anyone they want, including all those found in not only spammers' lists but also those harvested from your CC fields. The familiar, recognizable email address on the sent from will make your friends trust the email... and get their machines compromised.

I have received emails from myself ~:\ with spam...

My email accounts have not been hacked into. It's a gamble... if your email has been around long enough, chances are, it will fall in the hands of spammers, even if you take all precautions, because many of your friends may not and will still expose your email on that CC field...

Maybe the best option (and I do not use it because still could not find something I like) is one of those automatic replies, that requires a one time confirmation --- proof that a human, not a bot, is on the other side of the line...

Know of any free PHO or CGI script that does this Leo?

What can also be done is create a "key" that tells your friends the email really is from you, for example, inserting in the subject line, before anything else, a signature of sorts... ex., {JaySafe2read}

Thanks for your time and all the wonderful work you do here.

Joao

The focus of this article is specifically when people can see that it's recipients in their address book that are being spammed. That's happening a lot. Yes, it's trivial for spammers to spoof a From: address, but those emails are typically random and not a blast to your entire address book at once. That's this article, by the way: Someone's sending from my email address! How do I stop them?!

I understand the appeal of challenge/response systems as they're known, but I hate them. They make the sender of an email pay the price in time and inconvenience. Most of the time if I get such a challenge, I ignore it, as I'm sure many people do. You won't get spam, but you also won't get a lot of emails you want. Imagine having a newsletter of 100,000 subscribers and getting challenge response floods every time you send a newsletter. And that's this article: What's this confirmation request I got when I emailed someone?

And for completeness, here's my article on using BCC to reduce spam: How does using BCC help reduce spam?

06-Jan-2010

I have the same problem. Twice now I had e-mails sent to contacts from my address book. The first time I took the computer to the shop, installed malwarebytes antimalware and thought I waa safe. On Monday, 15.02.2010 it happened again. The computer shop says I need to contact Yahoo. I did contact them and all I received was an acknowledgement.
How can I delete my Yahoo e-mail address?
What else can I do?

Thank you

Sandy

I have this person using my name & email address I know who this person is but I need to prove it.What can I do?

My father, not very computer literate has just experienced this problem too. I have checked his sent box and the spam mails have not come from his account and he too has received a copy so it would appear that someone has managed to access his yahoo account, collected all his contact details and is now spamming the list and making it look like the mails are from him. I don't think it is an issue of using CC rather than BCC because it has been sent to the entire address book. He hasn't contacted Yahoo yet but surely it must be a problem at their end or are we saying that a spammer has managed to read his computer when he was logged on and then harvest the info? Is there anything he can do or will his contact list now get passed round the world of spammers? I'll advise him to run a virus check, change his password and set up an additional email address to use in future and see how that works but any other advice would be welcome.

theres an email getting around at the moment (may 2010) with subject "huhu" and a link to this address [email address removed] clicking on that address from within your hotmail client results in the same email you received (and clicked on the link contained therein) being sent to everybody in your address book. i would love to know how this works? is my password compromised? is it a security hole in hotmail only?

This got sent to about 59 people in my add book or from a forwarded e mail
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