E-mail, chat, & VoIP forum: Who is causing the spam?

Hi Nick.

Firstly your 2nd post about tracked emails. Sadly this is a bug in the new forum software, and hopefully it will be fixed soon. The tracking email you received tells you that 'you posted' in the discussion. Not very helpful. You will now get a tracking email telling you about your 2nd post, and about my post, but the format of the email is not as it should be. Changes to the system are in hand.

Back to your original question. Where does spam come from? Not an easy question to answer because spammers are very clever and can spoof email addresses so that they look like they come from elsewhere, even from your own email address.

What do you use to manage your emails? There are two main choices, either through a web page,(Web Mail), or using dedicated email client software, eg Outlook Express, Outlook, Windows Live Mail, Thunderbird, etc.

If you use an email client, you can "View > Source" of the email. Highlight it, goto View, then Source, (or Message source or similar, depending which software you use), and this will give you a page of transport details where the email came from and how it eventually got to you. It can be interesting, but of limited value.

Of course there is the possibility, (as you point out), that your relatives computer is infected, but if raising that possibility is a problem then I am not sure what you can do. The "View > Source" may indeed be useful there.

Do you get normal emails from this relative anyway? If not, I would set up a message rule to delete emails from this email address immediately without displaying it. If you do, then what about returning one of these spam emails to the relative and asking why he sent it?

Mark

...actually addresses the "Name" part of the sender's email address

So the email address of the sender (our relative) is Them@there.com and the body of the message says "Hi Them" then goes on with the spam bit.

Is that any clue?

Nick

So your email is Mark@blah.blah? That's what actually was used to address the email I got. It did not say "hi Fred" It said "hi emailname" (Them)

It looks as if the spammer is not very clever. I mean I get an email addressed to me and calling me the sender's emailname....ehhhh...buzzer time. Better to just not address it in the body at all.

However the plot thickens. While we do not have the rellie's email address on our home machine, my wife has it on her mobile, with no idea how protected she is...food for thought, given that she is the only one that is getting these AFAICS.

I am just glad I have a phone...for phoning..no apps, no emails, no web.

Nick

My wife and I use the same provider (bigpond), but have separate email accounts. The rels use a different provider (hotmail). That would strongly suggest them as the "culprit" (there. That's where the fight starts

Yes we could well be on their address book. However the fact my wife's phone has them on it muddies the waters a little. I need to check out the phone's security.