Help with spam from my email

[kimbowbill]

I am having a nightmare with spam from my email account, all my contacts are getting spam, everyone has been very understanding except for one ex member of WC, he is so rude, massive apols to anyone who is getting them from me, i have changed my password and done a full scan, everything is fine, is there anything else i can do?

 

[Firefox]

You may have a Trojan running on your machine. They don't always come up in virus scans.

The way it works, is it logs in to your email account, searches through your address book and sends off spam when it can get an internet connection or at certain intervals.

What email and what antivirus software are you using?

 

[kimbowbill]

I use Virgin media and Norton security

 

[Deleted member 21686]

Dont worry kimbo it's just one of those things.

 

[kimbowbill]

Thanks, but whats upset me is the nasty message from an ex member off here, i am doing my best to sort it, its not rocket science is it? folk just ignore it like i do, i get loads but just report and them

 

[Firefox]

It's a while since I had a problem with these but the Malwarebytes Forum forum is helpful. There is also a tool called HJT (Hijackthis) which can run on your machine and detect trojans PC Hell: HijackThis Tutorial for Removing Spyware

It's rather a specialist area. Some of the trojans are buggers to get rid of but some are quite easy. Within those links are other links to get rid of various trojans. If you go down this route you may need to get help from the guys on that forum who are quite helpful.

Good luck with it!

 

[Viktor]

It's also quite possible that it has nothing to do with you or your computer....my own private email address has been forged several times by spammers on a regular basis and I'm sure it will happen again soon....they usually pick them up from business websites you have been in communication with and spam using software that makes it appear that you are the sender....the first indication is that you get notifications of 'returned mail' in your inbox.

I usually copy the headers and add it to the returned mail message and then forward it as a complaint to my ISP, so for example if your ISP was Yahoo then you would forward it to abuse@yahoo.com .... you have to know enough though to get at and copy the headers....if you don't complain unfortunately you run the risk of various internet services adding your email address to their 'blacklist' and you could find that genuine emails sent by you are not received by the target business as they are deleted 'enroute' by other email servers.

 

[kimbowbill]

Thanks

I have been reporting them to my ISP,

 

[kangooroo]

Viktor is spot-on or you may find that your email address has been hacked.

Spammers have forged my address several times when I used my 'own domain' email account so I switched to free hotmail accounts and one of these was hacked last year. The same has happened to my husband's address - co-incidentally just this morning, for the 5th time.

I retained the headers incl IP addresses from your junk mail so if you weren't on the mailing list for the stuff being sent in your name, let me know and I'll paste them into an email for you to send to your IP for tracing.

I'm sure none of the recipients thought you had really sent any of it but hope you can get it sorted out quickly.

 

[kimbowbill]

Viktor is spot-on or you may find that your email address has been hacked.

Spammers have forged my address several times when I used my 'own domain' email account so I switched to free hotmail accounts and one of these was hacked last year. The same has happened to my husband's address - co-incidentally just this morning, for the 5th time.

I retained the headers incl IP addresses from your junk mail so if you weren't on the mailing list for the stuff being sent in your name, let me know and I'll paste them into an email for you to send to your IP for tracing.

I'm sure none of the recipients thought you had really sent any of it but hope you can get it sorted out quickly.

thanks Karen, yeah, i had one from you this morning, lol, but i know straight away its spam, i just reported it, the problem is, i don't know how to get their address

 

[Somelier]

Go into your email addresses and create one that has the name "aaa" (without quotation marks), then create the email address "aaaa@aaaa.com" (ignore quotation marks again)

If you have a virus that is automatically sending emails, then it will stall at the first fence because of the false address.

Hope this helps.

 

[kimbowbill]

Go into your email addresses and create one that has the name "aaa" (without quotation marks), then create the email address "aaaa@aaaa.com" (ignore quotation marks again)

If you have a virus that is automatically sending emails, then it will stall at the first fence because of the false address.

Hope this helps.

like it, thanks, will do that

 

[kangooroo]

thanks Karen, yeah, i had one from you this morning, lol, but i know straight away its spam, i just reported it, the problem is, i don't know how to get their address

One from me??!!! Nobody else has mentioned this and I don't appear to have sent it to my other accounts.... Now I'm curious - did it go to everyone on your usual mailing list? If so, there could be some clues in this re where it's originating - ie a spammer vs a trojan on you 'puter.

Depending on your email program you can usually click on its 'properties' and/or 'message source' to reveal the headers which will trace its route source and IP address and your ISP will be able to trace it from their. Alternatively you could google the IP address which can give some clues too.

 

[kimbowbill]

I've got headache lol:help::help:

 

[Somelier]

Of course, there's one simple answer, get a Macbook, then you won't be bothered anything like as much with problems!