My name has been stolen!

Sunny, don't worry about it. It's called "spoofing" or "forging" and unfortunately no one can really prevent it. I saw, and immediately deleted, the post you are referencing. Some people just have very sick minds.

Beverly

Hi there, Sunny. That was not a "people." That was some adolescent, pimply-faced boy engaging in self-stimulation. School is back in session now, so we're less likely to see him until holidays. ;-)

On the topic of forging, someone is using my email address again. For spam, not posting. He's even sending it to me - like I wouldn't notice!

Some evil miscreant did that with one of my identities (sent a spam run with my nym in the "From:" line), and managed to get a complaint sent to my stoopid ISP, who shut down my account for "spamming". Took me several days to get it all straightened out. I had to point out to "support" that the headers in the complaint most certainly did not contain "my" IP address. They grudgingly put me back online, but never would show me the "evidence". Stoopid Comcast.

Beverly

This happened a while back to me, now again. I recall Kate had the problem when I did before, but I haven't seen her domain in spam lately. My ISP is a really old one, a local one, and so far, pretty savvy.

Lucky you! My original ISP was a small local one (Teleport.com), which was swallowed by Mindspring/Earthlink/Whatever and I did not like their service, so finally bailed on dialup and went to cable. First cable company was @Home, later swallowed by ATT.com, which was swallowed by Comcast. I've too many e-mail addresses in the last several years!

It is just totally inexcusable when an ISP abuse desk accepts a spam complaint (which should include full headers of the spam) and uses the "From:" address as a basis for shutting off their customer's service. They know very well that the "From:" can be, and often *is*, forged. The IP address of the sender is the ONLY legitimate way to determine who actually sent the spam. LAZY, incompetent, mumble, mumble, grumble....

Beverly

Oh yes. I at one time before I got my pop3 mail account had the web mail forwarded to me. My ISP at the time blocked all my emails as spam because the "Blacklist" had my domain on it. I get hundreds of spam and viruses everyday from myself.

That's what comes of hiring tech support at minimum wage, minimum background, training and experience. Maybe it would work if they would actually train them before turning them loose, but who will train the trainers?