OT phishing help

Kathyl, this happened to me a few years ago. I was getting so many of this sort of thing (spam, phishing stuff, etc.) that my mailbox was filling up several times a day and causing "real" email to bounce. At that point, there was no option but to change my email addy. Your situation may still be manageable, though. If your mailbox isn't so full that you're losing the stuff you really do want to get, you may be able to wait it out. Best of luck!

Thanks Sandy....at this point I can log on enough to delete. But I'm going to be gone visiting my mother for a couple weeks, so I may have the bounce problem. Sigh....does ANYONE ever answer these scams to even make it worth it to the spammer???

It appears your email address was hijacked, and is being used to spam other folks. Most likely the email address is being copied as the 'return address' in the header, and the spam is coming from another source.

However, it is also possible that your computer is actually sending the emails. An example is a worm that emails itself to all the contacts in your address book(s). It also circumvents antivirus and firewalls and then does a mass mailing (nice, huh!).

I am not sure which problem you may have. It is possible some mail servers have ALREADY blacklisted your email -- which will increase the number of emails bounced.

I am not entirely sure if you can recover the safe use of your email. But I did remember reading about a trick of sorts that would notify you immediately if a worm or virus tries to send email from your address book. It took me a long time to find it again -- and I located it at this site

This is one of the ways you can get your mail client (Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, etc.) to notify you automatically whenever a worm or virus tries to sent out email from your address book.

1. Simply start-up your mail client and click add new contact.

1. In the field for your new contact name, enter; AAA then when the program prompt you for an email address, enter; VirusAlert complete the rest of the process and save.

This is how it work; AAA will be the first entry in your address book, therefore when any virus or worm attempt to send mail from your address book--starting with the first contact (AAA) it will be unable to deliver to a non-existing address (VirusAlert) and your mail client will notified you almost immediately.

There are some tools you should use to find out if you are infected with a virus or with spyware. I download and follow all the instructions at MajorGeeks.com -- but it for sure *IS* for geeks (or at least those who have a good understanding of computers). (Posts on the forum contain one of my favorite signatures "There are 10 types of people in this world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.")

A real thorough computer cleanup can be had by running all the steps for Malware Removal

For a quicker and easier checkup

1) Run an online virus scan with BitDefender (you MUST use IE as your browser for this) will take quite awhile. Be warned that BitDefender will first try to clean, and if not possible, WILL DELETE infected files. You can change the settings so that files are not deleted if you wish.2) Download and run SPYBOT Search and Destroy. Follow the instructions for download and install, and get the proper link here: I hope all this is of some help. It is a royal pain to change email addresses, I know. Kind of like changing your phone number, you get used to what you already have.

Lisa in NJ

It appears to be the first scenario. My email has been hijacked and is being sent from another source with me as the sender.

Lisa, when you add AAA as a new contact then use VirusAlert as the email addy should it be VirusAlert@ "my providers name" .net? Or just VirusAlert all alone for the email addy?

I want to do this... and thank you for telling us about it.

Leslie & The Furbabies in MO.

Another way is to sign up for a free email account like hotmail or yahoo. Add that email address to your Outlook Express address book. If you get an email from yourself then you know you have a worm that's sending email automatically.

it to the spammer???

Someone must... but remember, a lot of this is being sent by "botnets" -- machines belonging to a lot of people who haven't watched their security properly, and now their computers are under automated control from outside.

Try to enlist the aid of your isp's administrators to see if they can filter the bounces (or at least most of the bounces) before hitting your mailbox. Or use one of the anti-spam programs set to kill the junk that does make it in. Or both.

Right now, 90%+ of the traffic on the internet is spam, viruses, worms, phishing, etc. :-(

Kay

We had the same once. You need to go to your server and change your security question and password. Make it more difficult for them. Pami

One thing you might try is using AVAST which is a free and very good virus scanner. If you have tons of emails going out of your computer it will alert you that you have suspricious emails(either too many addresses being sent to per email, or too many individual emails with the same content) and you will at least know what is happening. IF the problem is actually ON your machine, scan it online with Trend Micro(also free) which will help pinpoint any problems you may be having vis a vis worms etc. Hope this helps.

Thanks! I'll check it out. I'm 99% certain that these aren't coming from my computer. Someone is masking their address by hijacking mine. I've deleted the emails that lead me to believe that. But I'm sure I'll have more soon. They seem to be slowing down considerably....but maybe that's because it's the weekend?? We'll see. Many of the names (and some of the return messages) were Indian. And the email was about a Microsoft "award" that would be paid in pounds. I find it hard to believe there is any gain whatsoever for anyone who does this.

Just 'Virus Alert' (or any other phrase that you will recognize as a warning).

The point is that you WANT the first email in your address book to bounce back to you if it is ever used.

*YOU* will never send anything to that email.

If a worm or virus phishes in your address book and tries to send email to all your contacts, you will know as soon as you get a bounced email sent to 'Virus Alert'.

A well written virus might still send emails from you to the folks in your address book. Or you might get lucky and the virus might stop at the first 'error' in mailing. In any case you will know you have a virus.

Thanks, Lisa. I have added it to my address book. Crossing my fingers and knocking on wood that I never need to test it out! VBG

Leslie & The Furbabies in MO.