Top deals on CNET here
Community Newsletter: Q&A: Spam e-mail received, but it’s coming from me?!
- 10/2/08 4:45 PM
Spammers Sometimes Hijack YOUR eMail Client
by ciphoenix - 10/2/08 9:15 PM In reply to: Spam e-mail received, but it’s coming from me?! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
If your eMail address is being hijacked to SPAM people, you're not alone. A few months ago I set my MS-Outlook to automatically respond to SPAMMERS by sending an automatic Nasty-Gram and a demand to "cease and desist". Well, lo and behold, I got a phone call from a guy whose eMail address was used to SPAM me - unbeknownst to him. There are a few methods to rid yourself of these eMail hijackers, but it will take a bit of effort and a program called XSoft-Spy SE. I have collected DOZENS of SPAM / SCAM / Phishing emails and wrote an accompanying article and humorous and scathing comments for each one. You can start by reading the article at: http://www.AssholesAmongUs.com/phishersofmen.htm
In June of 2000, someone using a search engine stumbled upon the name of the person (in Africa) on my Web site who scammed him out of $4,000. He called me, but all I could do was advise him to file a report with the Federal authorities and Post Office for mail fraud.
On / about October 20, I got a call from a detective in Connecticut who said my article - which he ran into by using Google - helped him bag one of these low-life scammers in an International sting operation.
The refrenced article teaches you how to set up your eMail box to kill the SPAM, and has links to freeware and other utilities that have proven effective to THIS 40-year Internet / Arpnet veteran.
Spread the Word
Dave
How to integrate Active Directory within another platform?
by dannypembamoto - 10/3/08 7:03 AM In reply to: Spam e-mail received, but it’s coming from me?! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I need to know how to integrate my Windows 2003 server with another PC running Unix (or any other OS platform; Windows 95 or MS-DOS).
Thanks.
Spam from me
by Wizzbone - 10/3/08 2:30 PM In reply to: Spam e-mail received, but it’s coming from me?! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I had once an angry letter from somebody that had received porn-pictures from my email.... embarassing to say the least.
When you (or I ) get our mail and spam from the server, then delete it, the spammer will know that your email is 'live', because it did NOT get a msg saying your email doesn't exist. You may have received similar emails your self when you send an email to someone that changed ISPs and thus its email address.
Then it is quite a simple program to write, that automatically writes your email in the sender of spam, eventhough you never send it.
I use incredimail (not the free version) which has a feature where you can view the emails on the server BEFORE you download these. Then you can 'bounce' these emails, which means that the sender receives a 'non exist' email. This has kept my email fairly spam free.
Maybe others have different solution.
Ant
How to track spam
by RRLeach - 10/3/08 11:13 PM In reply to: Spam e-mail received, but it’s coming from me?! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I have come late to this party sorry. The advice in the threads are good, However.
Spamers can NOT really hide, No one can. every thing on the net can be tracked if you get to it in time.
Open the header of your mail and depending on you mail package you can see every mail server it went through to get to you.
so even if the spamer is using your name you can track it to the last US mail server. And maby even farther.
If he has hacked your system with a virus the mail you send your self for a test and the spam will have all the same SMTP's on the header.
I could be more detailed but it would get confusing.
thanks
Sign your messages
by fischnets - 10/4/08 5:23 AM In reply to: Spam e-mail received, but it’s coming from me?! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Remember your email address is NOT YOU. Anybody or anything can generate email addresses. It does not take any intellegence to randomly generate or otherwise pick email addresses. It is very likely that one of them will happen to be the same one you are using.
The ONLY thing you can specifically do is to make sure you and people you communicate with KNOW that messages you send come from you. This involves attaching a "Digital Signature" to your messages. There are existing systems in place to support "Digital Signatures". Thawte.com offers a no charge personal email certificate that can be used to sign email messages.
The process begins by verifying that the email address you are using gets delivered to you. Now your email address has a signature which guarantees that messages signed with this signature came from a valid email source. You can take it a step further by identifying yourself to a trusted third party and then the signed messages can be said to have come from you specifically. It is then possible for everyone you communicate with to know that unless your message has a valid signature it did NOT come from your mail system and thus is NOT from you. This digital signature can be easily machine identified non signed messages simply rejected.
The next step is to get everybody you actually want to communicate with to do the same. Once this happens your email client can be set to not accept unsigned messages. Eventually it would be possible to not allow unsigned messages to be sent at all.
There are many other benifits to a system that uses signed email messages. But the potentual elimination of malicious email is one benifit that really seems huge to me.
forwarded mail
by louisv - 10/4/08 7:12 AM In reply to: Spam e-mail received, but it’s coming from me?! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I also get a lot (at least 100 per day) spam, in effect from myself, via an account that I abandoned years ago. When I switched to my current ISP, I made a mistake in asking my old ISP to forward my mail until all my receipients were advised. I had no idea that they would NEVER stop forwarding. 99.9% of my spam comes through that way. The old compamy was contacted by phone, and e-mail to discontinue that account, no luck, I am no longer a customer! The current ISP claims they cannot block "forwarded" mail. Is there not a way of stopping this torrent of spam? Or do I indeed have to change addresses, so that the old ISP knows nothing about.
I hope somebody has a solution.
Thanks
Louis Vroomen
If spam comes from your addbook there are 3 possibilities
by russemartin - 10/4/08 9:14 AM In reply to: Spam e-mail received, but it’s coming from me?! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
1.) create entry at top of your address book as follows:
AAAAAAAA@aaaaaaaa.aaa
This will thwart any virus on your system from generating "spam" from the contents in your address book. When the virus starts to send spam it will try to send it with the first address book entry it finds. This entry will receive a mail send error and stop the virus in its tracks.
2.) stop sending emails out with send lists greater than one entry by using the undisclosed sender list if your email client has this option. Also pass this info on to your email friends to do the same and pass on all of this info so they can help reduce "SPAM".
3.) If the previous option is not available to you then use the BCC: option or do a cc: list inside the body of the email.
Oh! One more thing, it is extremely necessary to obtain a virus scanner for your system if you do not use one now!
Use your name as well as your e-mail address
by rsimanski - 10/4/08 3:20 PM In reply to: Spam e-mail received, but it’s coming from me?! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
Some of my computer support clients have had this problem, and I had it myself a few years ago. There isn't much that you can do once your e-mail address has been hijacked, except to make sure that you don't have any viruses or bots on your system. However, there is a way that you can help the recipients in your address book distinguish between these spam messages and legitimate ones from you.
The answer is to always include your name, or at least a nickname or pseudonym, along with your e-mail address in the From and Reply To fields of your messages. The reason is that hijackers may capture your e-mail address but not the name that goes with it.
When my e-mail address was hijacked, I notified everyone in my address book of the problem and told them to look for my name as well as my e-mail address. If the From field included my name, it was a legitimate message from me. If it didn't include my name, it was not from me and should be deleted without being read.
The good news is that the problem that you are having will probably not go on for very long. After a while, spammers will stop using your e-mail address and go on to another one. This assumes, of course, that your system is clean and that the spam is not coming from your computer.
changing the from address..
by xneox - 10/4/08 4:49 PM In reply to: Spam e-mail received, but it’s coming from me?! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
There is another way of doing this.. Depending on the email provider, it is possible to change the from address. I know that for sure as my university email service lets me do that. This is basically used as the reply to address by the email servers which get the mail. And the same mail is often shown in the "from" field on your email.
I dont' personally know of any other email providers who have this feature.
I'm quite sure your email address has been spoofed
by R2R2R2R2 - 10/4/08 6:53 PM In reply to: Spam e-mail received, but it’s coming from me?! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I'm quite sure your email address has been spoofed.
It's relatively easy for them to spoof your email address. If they actually hijacked your email account or your computer, you'd be see the activity in the send part of your account and you'd be able to trace it back to your actual email address..
I've been a spoof victim several times with a couple of different email addresses and have been blacklisted because of it. I had to contact the IT departments of the companies that banned me to whitelist me so my ability to send email to their employees could be restored (Among the things I do is political PR, so I was banned by organizations like CBS because of the spoofed account).
I've also had my phone number spoofed by Dish Network's sales agent robo calls, so I've actually received phone calls that show up in my caller ID as from myself.
What about email that I get that is not addressed to me
by sborsher - 10/5/08 2:29 PM In reply to: Spam e-mail received, but it’s coming from me?! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I get emails that have nothing that looks like any of me email addresses anywhere in any of the routing info. How does that happen? I've asked many "experts" and have never gotten a satisfying answer.
Dealing with unwanted emails
by sborsher - 10/6/08 8:13 AM In reply to: Spam e-mail received, but it’s coming from me?! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I just TRASH any unwanted emails, including those from my own email addresses by using OE message rules. I also sort all other emails into appropriate folders the same way. That way I can focus on the important ones immediately and leave the others for EOD. It is unusual things like receiving emails from yourself which should make you think about how to control the unusual, rather than be controlled by the unusual.
It's not really your address that sent it
by kagey111 - 10/11/08 10:32 PM In reply to: Spam e-mail received, but it’s coming from me?! by Lee Koo (ADMIN)
I get the same thing, emails with my address and also close to my address supposedly sent by me. If you hover on the email you can see the email address that actually sent it. I don't know how they do it but it is not coming from your email address.
| Forum legend: | |
 |
Locked thread |
 |
Moderator |
 |
CNET staff |
 |
Samsung staff |
 |
Norton Authorized Support team |
 |
AVG staff |
 |
Windows Outreach team |
 |
Dell staff |
 |
Intel staff |
