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Junk E-Mail Question

silvib

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Firstly, hope everyone had a good Christmas. We are experiencing a high level of e-mails that look as if they're coming from ourselves. We have 2 identities on our computers and they're both receiving them. Our virus scan runs daily, AVG, and I also run Ad-Aware, yet they're still coming in. The e-mails cover all different topics from general sales to non-mentionable things. Has anyone else experienced this and, if so, how did you get rid of them? This has happened before several months' ago and I don't remember what we did (if anything) and they've started up again. Thanks in advance. Sylvia
 

dioxide45

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Firstly, hope everyone had a good Christmas. We are experiencing a high level of e-mails that look as if they're coming from ourselves. We have 2 identities on our computers and they're both receiving them. Our virus scan runs daily, AVG, and I also run Ad-Aware, yet they're still coming in. The e-mails cover all different topics from general sales to non-mentionable things. Has anyone else experienced this and, if so, how did you get rid of them? This has happened before several months' ago and I don't remember what we did (if anything) and they've started up again. Thanks in advance. Sylvia

What is happening is the spammer is spoofing the from address on the e-mail. They can put anything in there. The e-mails are likely not being sent by you. Others receiving the same spam think it is coming from them too.
 

nana7

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I have also been recieving e mails from myself!!!:wall: Yesterday I recieved an e card from someone...it was a virus. Have spent HOURS getting rid of it.
So DON'T OPEN ANY OF THATJUNK!! I also have AVG and it has done a good job.
 

silvib

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Makes me feel better we're not alone in this. Pity people don't have better things to do with their time, don't you think?
 

TomCayman

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This particular kind of spoofing is a major problem the last few weeks, as not only do you get emails that look as though they are from yourself, the subject lines also look credible, eg "mail delivery failure" etc

Waiting for McAfee / Norton to get a fix on it is taking some time... meanwhile just have to delete all this spam
 

Makai Guy

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Most spam is sent out with false "from" addresses. These address can be obtained by using a list of acquired email addresses, or it could be the result of a virus on somebody's system that sends messages out with "from" addresses found in the infected system's addressbook. Either way, this is called "spoofing" the email address.

Lots of the crap I'm getting these days appear to both be "from" and "to" my email address.

While it is possible that you have a virus that is sending out the mail you're asking about, it is much more likely that that mail had its origin somewhere other than on your system. (If it actually had come from your system due to a virus, it probably would have used some address other than yours, found in your addressbook, to make its origin harder to trace.)

When one of those bogus emails gets sent to an invalid address, the server at the other end bounces it back to what the message indicates was the sender -- in this case you -- even though that person really had nothing to do with the original message.

There's nothing you can do about it. Just delete those returned messages and don't worry about them. DO NOT open any attachments.

But... DO make sure you have a good antivirus program, keep it up to date, and scan your system just to be sure you're "clean".

The server at my mail service does a great job of identifying spam mail and marking it as such, as well as catching and cleaning infected messages. Also, I use Mozilla Thunderbird as my email client, and it catches the few spam messages my server doesn't. Plus I scan all incoming mail with AVG and it catches an occasional infection that got thru my server unscathed. In addition, my Thunderbird will not execute any attachments unless I tell it to -- which I do NOT unless I've made sure it is clean first.
 
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