Undeliverable notices for mail I never sent

[brothercake]

I'm getting roughly a dozen a day - undeliverable notices for mail I never sent. Is this gonna be a virus spoofing my email address? I know I haven't been infected - but do I need to be worried about it?

[Jason]

it can either be the worm that you "don't" have or it can be someone who used your addy for some smtp. Those are my guesses. Cause the worm will access your computer and mass email useing your addy to any addresss that it finds in certain files on your comp. Otherwise SMTP could be some bot using your email to sen spam to users...


Jason

[oracleguy]

Yeah spoofing is probably what it is.

[cwdlmdd]

That happen to my wife not long ago and I just deleated them with out looking at them I don't want to take the chance. Even though I don't use an e-mail program like outlook that would put the e-mail right on my computer.

[brothercake]

Thanks - I'm pretty sure I'm not infected - SpyBot didn't find anything, and in any case wouldn't messages show up in my sent mail if they came from me?

[Jason]

not necessisarily. And spybot doesn't find womrs, it only finds spyware. The mail doesn't have to be sent from outlook or client like that, the worm probably has its own client to send the mail from. You might want to run a virus scan at norton to see if you have a virus of some kind. If that turns up clean then it was probably some bot (not on your computer) using your email addy and running it through SMTP.


Jason

[oracleguy]

Originally posted by Jason
The mail doesn't have to be sent from outlook or client like that, the worm probably has its own client to send the mail from.

Yeah that last virus that has been going around, soBig I think has that "feature".

[Spookster]

you also might want to change your pop server password. if your ISPs mail server has webmail access it could mean someone got into your account that way.

[Roy Sinclair]

The problem with the Sobig virus is that you only have to be in the address book of someone who's got that virus. If the list of people you've given your address to is short (and your address hasn't ben found and passed around to a million spammers) then you may need to send a notice to everyone in that list to make sure they aren't infected.

[brothercake]

I have thousands of people in my address book .. no way can I contact them all ...

I think spoofing seems likely .. I mean, anyone can put anything as their from address.

But I wanna be sure anyway - I got the Sobig removal tool and I don't have that, and changed my webmail password. Are there any free virus scanners, or do I have to buy Norton or something? I've never had anti-virus software so I don't really know how it all works ..

[oracleguy]

If you get Norton or any other similar product, they run in the system tray and actively scan files for viruses, so like if your opening up myprogam.exe and it has a virus, it will alert you and stop the program from executing. And you can set them up to scan incoming and outgoing emails for viruses. And if there is one, it removes it.

[scroots]

brothercake search on google there are quite a few, i think at one point there was a free mcafee online virus scanner.

if there isn't a mcafee one there are many other free ones.

scroots

[J&J]

I had the same prob with my work computer (dial-up), and BTW - my work email has my home email in the address book... So I was expecting to get the emails at home too.

We have Spybot & Norton Antivirus installed on my work computer - and neither one detected any probs when a scan was done. What I did was call my work's ISP and they deleted all 200 emails in my work inbox. I'm not sure if they took other measures as well, but I haven't had that problem since. (So I'm assuming it's spoofing of some sort.)

As for the home computer, I have broadband "always-on" connection but I never got the emails at home. I also had Spybot & Norton Antivirus on my home computer, but I think what really prevented my home computer from suffering the same fate was because my home computer has a software firewall running at all times, not to mention a hardware firewall as well.

You may want to look into getting both antivirus & firewall software for your computer. Antivirus isn't too expensive, and as for firewall - I got mine for free & it works great! It's called "ZoneAlarm", found at http://www.zonelabs.com. If you buy the Pro version, it also blocks pop-ups and stuff.

You can also have your computer's vulnerability tested for free by having your computer ports probed/shields tested at https://grc.com/x/ne.dll?bh0bkyd2. Give it a try, then download ZoneAlarm & retest your computer - just to see the difference it makes.

~J&J~
"I use to have a handle on life... til it broke!"