Posted: 8/5/2010 7:28:36 AM EDT
| I started getting returned emails from my own account sending links to stuff like Chinese viagra or some such nonsense. So, apparently either I have a virus or someone is spoofing my Yahoo account right? At any rate, I've got company provided McAfee already on my laptop. I also run Spybot Search & Destroy, Malware bytes and AdAware. I've run all of those and none are showing any viruses. What would be my next step? I could change my Yahoo account password but if I have a keylooger somewhere on the machine, it doesn't do any good, does it? |
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Quoted: If you have a company provided laptop, you may want to inform IT and have them re-image the laptop. If you are using it for work and are compromised that's bad news. If it is from on online email provider (yahoo) chances are it isn't the laptop. Change your password and password reset answers and see if it continues. |
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Quoted:
It has little to do with your laptop. It has everything to do with someone using your SMTP email address as a return address. Check your sent messages folder. this. You can relay emails from any SMTP device you have access to or build claiming to be FROM anyone. If the delivery fails it will send the failure notice to the 'from' address you used. Annoying, but most likely not hacked. |
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Quoted:
Quoted:
If you have a company provided laptop, you may want to inform IT and have them re-image the laptop. If you are using it for work and are compromised that's bad news. If it is from on online email provider (yahoo) chances are it isn't the laptop. Change your password and password reset answers and see if it continues. this if it has problems after that have IT put a new image on it. if your IT department if fairly large and on top of things and your at an off the main site location (wide area network) but still on the companies network they can load a new image over the network. If you are at home, your gonna have to send it in. |
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Quoted:
I checked my "Sent Messges" folder and all it has are emails that I sent myself. Just do a password change? It likely has nothing to do with your machine or email account. A spammer is sending emails with your address in the From: header. If a person has control over a mail server, they can send emails with any From: or Reply-To: address they can type in. |
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The problem is that there are spammers sending emails out with your email as either the "sender" or "reply-to" address. Whenever they send an email to an account that doesn't exist, inbox is full, etc, the receiving mail server usually sends a "bounce" message back to the sender or reply-to address. They double their ROI by doing this....it either gets to the original recipient, or it gets to you.
Think of it like this....I can send you a letter via USPS. I can send it from my house with a return address of someone elses house. If you move and the USPS ends up returning the letter, it won't come back to me, it'll go to the address I wrote on the outside of the envelope in the upper left corner. If it was an advertisement, I knew that either you'd get it, or the person it got returned to will get it. Either way, someone saw it. |
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Quoted:
The problem is that there are spammers sending emails out with your email as either the "sender" or "reply-to" address. Whenever they send an email to an account that doesn't exist, inbox is full, etc, the receiving mail server usually sends a "bounce" message back to the sender or reply-to address. They double their ROI by doing this....it either gets to the original recipient, or it gets to you. Think of it like this....I can send you a letter via USPS. I can send it from my house with a return address of someone elses house. If you move and the USPS ends up returning the letter, it won't come back to me, it'll go to the address I wrote on the outside of the envelope in the upper left corner. If it was an advertisement, I knew that either you'd get it, or the person it got returned to will get it. Either way, someone saw it. So there is nothing I can do, then, right? |
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Funny but I recently had the same problem on my Yahoo account, the only way I found it was by going somewhere I seldom go, to the Yahoo site to check my mail. 99% of the time I just did the mail via Outlook, a friend relayed that someone was sending spam via my address and I could find nothing in my sent folder on the outlook program, went to Yahoo and checked the sent emails to find several that I had not sent prominently displayed. Short story was that I deleted the Yahoo account and went with another that was highly recommended, no problems so far so wish me luck. OP, I hope ya get the problem fixed soon.  |