Help! My email's been hijacked!!

[squiggs1982]

Hello all.

I've been checking through my spam folder and have found a high number of returned reciepts stating that a given piece of email has been returned for some reason or other.

However, the worrying thing is - I've never sent it!!

It can't be a virus, because I'm away from home just now an my computer is not on!! That begs the question, how on earth is this happening and how can I stop it?

TIA
Adrian

[danielf]

These messages are probably sent to you by someone who is infected with a virus or worm of sorts. As far as I know, this is nothing to worry about, provided your antivirus is up to date.

edit: have a look here

[squiggs1982]

Originally Posted by danielf

These messages are probably sent to you by someone who is infected with a virus or worm of sorts. As far as I know, this is nothing to worry about, provided your antivirus is up to date.

The problem is, the headers say that it was me that sent it. Here is an excerpt (with names removed to protect the identities of the guilty! )

[QUOTE]------ This is a copy of the message, including all the headers. ------

Return-path: <mailbox@axxx.co.uk>
Received: from user-4471.lns5-c7.dsl.pol.co.uk ([84.67.49.119] helo=127.0.0.1)
by mailrelaym2.core.theplanet.net with esmtp (Exim 3.36 #2)
id 1CdxgA-0001Ad-00
for kelly.xxxx@adecco.co.uk; Mon, 13 Dec 2004 21:24:27 +0000
SUBJECT: attach
FROM: mailbox@axxx.co.uk
QUOTE]

[Matth]

More likely, your address has been forged on some spam, which has bounced.

A lot of spammers seem to cycle through their "victims" addresses as forged sender addresses - it is so trivial to forge an address - even I could do it.

I was really dismayed by this news item on Net4Nowt:
One in five consumers buy software from Spam

Why do spammers keep doing it?
BECAUSE THEY DON'T NEED MANY SUCCESSES FOR IT TO PAY!
http://www.spamdontbuyit.org/ - Spread the word, give spammers the cold shoulder!


- Do you have a firewall?
It's possible you have a trojan,
or somebody on the same ISP with you in their address book does - with a subject of "attach", it sounds more like a virus than a spambot, and the usual ones tend to forge an address from the address book, rather than calling attention to the address they ARE at.

Someone with your e-mail address in their contacts has one of the many e-mail worms, the e-mails get sent with your address marked as the sender, so any bounces come back to you.

[squiggs1982]

Ok guys. Thanks for your help. Very irritating this!! Will have to find out who this might be an d let them know!


Cheers
Adrian

[MadGamer]

I know how annoying it is. I kept on Recieving emails from MailerDeamon@aol.com and it was really frustrating because im not even with AOL.

To help stop this and worms being downloaded and sent to everyone on your contacts list, open your email client and put a new entry in as:

Name: !000
E-Mail Address: WORM ALERT !!!!!!!!

[Gareth]

depending on the size of your circle of friends, you may want to drop 'em a polite mail to suggest everyone checks their machine for virii. If you're in too many people's address books, this may be impractical and bloody annoying till it stops

[hoggyspuds]

Originally Posted by Paul M

Someone with your e-mail address in their contacts has one of the many e-mail worms, the e-mails get sent with your address marked as the sender, so any bounces come back to you.

i get regular e-mails from myself....lol...i have a laid back approach to this...(being irish)....i use mailwasher...excellent program and free. Delete your own e-mails from yourself and have a pint of guinness! works for me! On a serious note...it does **** me off too!

[nffc]

You can use SMTP to send an email from any address without even having access to the address in question, hence this is possible.

Probably nothing to worry about- if you're getting peeved you can always find the IP of the "sender" and lodge a complaint...