How did this happen?

[sue2white]

Yesterday, amongst the Spam emails that were moved to my Anti-Spam inbox, I noticed and email with sent from my own email address to me.
It was indeed spam -trying to sell me some computer software. But how on earth did it have my own email address as sender.
Obviously, I checked my sent box, to make sure it hadn't originated from my computer and it hadn't. But is this a bit of a coincidence that my address has been phished and then used to send a mail back to me??
Scary stuff.

Sue

[Procat]

I have had that in the past. Was a bit spooky. At the time my ISP was being targeted by spammers. No idea of the mechanics of it though.

[Peter Goodey]

Ten of the last twelve junk mails I received have got my own email address shown as sender

[sue2white]

Ten of the last twelve junk mails I received have got my own email address shown as sender

What's going on?????

Sue

[David Benson]

Don't open any of them - they may lead you to download a virus or trojan.

We get hundreds a month, some showing with added letters in the address - often a z or n plus various other combinations of letters.

I think it's called 'spoofing' the address.

[MarkJ]

As David says, it is called spoofing. Very easy to do. I suspect the spammers do this to make people curious. One of my email accounts has probably 30% of spam which I allegedly sent myself....

They get email addresses from many sources (I have mentioned that before on the forum I think - but if not, I am happy to explain ), and use programs to send out the mails (nearly always from compromised computers). The program is set in these cases to pick a recipient address (from a list or whatever) and then use that name as the sender too.

Davids advice re not opening the mails is sound.
Depending on your mail program, you can examine the "headers" for any email - which shows you lots of technical information. But in there, it will show the actual senders details.

Unless you know what you are doing - and have a specific reason for opening the spam mails - it is best to simply delete them.

Mark

[Sandyhall]

Change all your passwords as well.

This last lot of Phishing that has been in the news a couple of weeks ago had my name on the list, they sent spam e-mails to every one in my contacts list.
no I'm not violent but I want to be.

Sandy

[JAP1]

sue2qhite,

Ignore it!

That particularly body isnot connected with me. seems not to be on a moither in birth.
Oh, Sir, that it's just the greatest of great news!
But if I were you, I would be terried!
We have a WIlllim Arumstrng

bbnm;JAPJJ

J

[JAP1]

Now are they playing with B-G.

That last post is definitely not mine.

???

Weird.

JAP

[Carmy]

During the last couple of weeks there have been strong warning out about several email account providers being compromised. We were told to make sure we changed our passwords.

In your email Options, you have the strongest security settings in place, right? Don't open mail from an unknonwn contact. Right click on it and check Properties. If anything doesn't seem right, delete the mail without opening.

Before you sign out of your browser, you run Options, right? You delete everything, right? Then you run a program like C Cleaner to get rid of the stuff your computer gathered without your knowledge during your recent activity on the Internet.

Most importantly, you update your virus program every day before you browse.

Nothing can make your computer 100% free of attack, but the weakest link is the operator. Scan everything you download.

Be careful of where you browse and never leave a site and forget to log out.