spam
By savak03
@savak03 (6684)
United States
January 19, 2011 9:47am CST
Have you ever got an email from yourself???
Were you the one who sent it?
Now, I will admit that sometimes I will forward an email from one of my temporary email accounts if it is something that I want to look into further or save. However this morning I found an email from me, from the account I was in. I was scanning through my inbox like I do every morning trashing the stuff that I wasn't interested in before I started on the mail I wanted to read. I noticed this one email that had the word "viagra" in the subject and was going to report it as spam until I noticed who it came from. Boy, was I surprised to find I had sent it to myself. NOT! Now I'm afraid to report it as spam because that might mess with my email account.
These people are getting smart about how to get their trashy messages into your inbox whether you want them or not.
Does anyone out there have any idea how they could have sent me an email from my own account and how I can put a stop to it???
1 person likes this
5 responses
@sconibear (8016)
• United States
19 Jan 11
Yep! They hacked my Yahoo account.
I had friends contacting me asking if I was now in the market selling magic beans that turn mushrooms into wood.
Anyhoo......I changed my password and that seems to have done the trick for now.......knock on.........you know.....
@owlwings (43915)
• Cambridge, England
19 Jan 11
Sconi, surely anyone knows that bears have no interest in Magic Beans, Mushrooms or wood (except for living trees on which to make their claw marks).
If your account was REALLY hacked, and you were able to change your password, then I suspect that the hacker was someone who was playing a trick on you and didn't wish you any real harm. Most serious hackers would change the password and other details, I think.
@ Savak: Changing your password regularly is a good security procedure but it won't stop these 'spoofed From: field' emails. Yes, it is concerning that some of your friends MAY receive emails apparently from you but remember that all that most spammers know is your email address. They DON'T know your contacts/friends so, if a friend receives a mail apparently from you, it would be purely by chance.
@owlwings (43915)
• Cambridge, England
19 Jan 11
I often get spam emails from myself. The fact is that my email addresses are, unfortunately, on many spammers' lists. Moreover, several of my addresses begin with the letter 'A'.
Using certain software, it is incredibly easy to make it LOOK as if an email comes from anyone you want. All one has to do is to edit the 'From:' field to contain any email address you want and many of the softwares that spammers use automatically insert a chosen email address (often they just put the same email address in the 'From:' field as in the 'To:' field). When this arrives in your Inbox (or Spam folder), it LOOKS as though it's from you!
The important thing to realise is that YOUR account hasn't been hacked, in this case, at least. All that is needed is your email address, which, of course, the spammer already knows because the mail was sent to you!
You can often identify where the mail was REALLY sent from by looking at the Full Header and identifying the IP address from which the mail originated. You can look up this IP address and find out where it came from. Usually, all it can tell you is which ISP is responsible for handling the email. You may, if you wish, send the ENTIRE mail (including the header) to 'abuse@[ISP site]' but, unfortunately, the ISPs that allow their subscribers to send spam mail are very unlikely to even read such reports, much less take any action.
Reporting such emails as Spam will NOT compromise your email account because the spam filter checks where the mail is REALLY from and, after a number of similar reports, merely blocks that IP address.
@owlwings (43915)
• Cambridge, England
19 Jan 11
You should NOT be worried that any of your contacts will receive the same mail 'as if' from you. ALL that the spammer has is your email address. They know nothing about your personal contacts and, if any of them also receive the same email, it will more than likely appear to be from themselves.
@lingli_78 (12822)
• Australia
20 Jan 11
no i haven't actually... i always get lots of spams in my e-mail everyday... but never from myself... it is always from other people which i don't know... it is weird that somebody can use my e-mail to send spams to my e-mail... i think you really have to investigate this and put a stop to it... unfortunately, i don't know how to do this since i never have any experience before... i hope other mylotters here can help you to give a better idea... take care and have a nice day...
@savak03 (6684)
• United States
20 Jan 11
I figured someone could, and sure enough someone did. Here in mylot there are always people who have experience with just about everything. I even got help one night from my friends on mylot when our dog was having puppies and was having trouble doing it. That was an interesting discussion.
@pyewacket (43903)
• United States
20 Jan 11
As you know, I've had my email addy hacked a LOT of times, I solved one problem so my contact list wouldn't get spam mail "supposedly" by me and that was to completely delete my address book...I have the addresses stored elsewhere now...yes a pain in the "a" but at least my friends/contacts aren't getting spam mail from hackers. One problem though, despite my having zapped my address book, someone is STILL using my email address and none of the contacts are any that I know...the reason I know someone is using my email address is due to getting those Mailer-Daemon things bounced back to me and yes get emails to myself and yes, usually for viagra or some promo for a website. My suspicion is that while I've changed my passwords all the time, and zapped my address book, my email address is stored in some hackers database...Owlwings did a good suggestion....if you read the full header for the email it'll give an IP address where it came from...I've checked and most often the IP address is from China. Also, those forwards people often send...god only knows how many times those things circulate worldwide, the hackers might be among the names that the forward is sent to and most people never bother to delete all that contact info, making it so easy for a hacker to "lift" email addresses from those forwards
@petersum (4522)
• United States
19 Jan 11
There are so many anonymous email software around and the return email address can be anyone's! I have a Chinese B... who uses my email address on millions of mails for fake watch sites. The undeliverable notices, 100's of them, come back to my email box! The sites, which are all Chinese registered (and thus untraceable), change daily. To make matters worse they are linked via dozens of Russian sites which again change daily. What can you do? NOTHING!
