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Do You Get Email From Yourself, of That Your Friends Didn't Send?
By kelly60
@kelly60 (4547)
United States
July 17, 2007 7:41pm CST
Just the other day, a friend of mine came to me and was telling me that she got the email that I sent her about the work at home opportunity. She wanted to know more about it. I told her that I hadn't sent her any email. She went on about how the email said something about how I had to "kiss a lot of toads to get where I was" and how this opportunity was just too good to pass up. I told her again that I hadn't sent her the email. She insisted that since it had come from my email address, it had to have come from me. It took me almost ten minutes to convince her, and I'm still not sure that she is convinced that I didn't send her the message.
Then today, my sister came over to my house. She was telling me about all of the email that she is getting from herself. It comes from her address and looks just like something that she would have sent.
I have gotten these too on occasion, though not very rarely with email accounts that aren't shared with friends who like to forward emails. You never can bee too careful when sending out massive amounts of email like my friend does.
My friend that I told you about above forwards emails all day long. Every email she forwards contains her entire address book, my email included, so anyone who wants her to believe that any of us are sending her an email can easily use an email spoofing program or script to make it look like the email is coming from one of us. After all, they have ALL of our emails, and she has no reason not to trust emails coming from any of us.
I don't think that my sister forwards a lot of emails, although her name may be on someone else's email list, much the same way mine is. Either that or someone has taken it from an address book somewhere. Many spammers are capable of getting your address from a variety of sources. They can make it look like the messages they send you are coming from places they are not really coming from. Please be careful when opening these messages.
6 people like this
7 responses
@lordwarwizard (35747)
• Singapore
18 Jul 07
It doesn't mean a thing, my friend. Really.
I can easily send emails from YOUR email address to anyone. Easy piecey, no sweat.
If you did not send that email, it is likely there is some virus/spyware lurking in the computer of either your friend, you or another of your friends (of even these friends' friends and so on).
To give yourself a piece of mind, to at least assure yourself that your computer is not the cause, run a check at housecall.trendmicro.com . :P
@kelly60 (4547)
• United States
19 Jul 07
I know that it had nothing to do with me personally, and tried to explain this to here. I assume that the problem was because she won't stop forwarding all of the emails that included everyone's addresses. I have seen (and played around with) a script where you could send someone a genuine looking email from anywhere. I got a couple of them from the white house and other official organizations that had been sent through this script. It was really not hard to do, and there is no way she could tell by looking at them.
@santuccie (3384)
• United States
19 Jul 07
Here are a couple more for you:
http://www.ewido.net/en/
http://support.f-secure.com/enu/home/ols.shtml
@villageanne (8553)
• United States
19 Jul 07
Spammers can acturally harvest a large amount of email addresses and use them as their own. If you have a yahoo email account, it will tell you if it is verified as being sent from that email address or not. That is the only way to tell. It is getting that you cannot trust even your email. Crazy world.
@kelly60 (4547)
• United States
22 Jul 07
That's true. The funny part is that my sister told me that she sometimes sends things home to herself from work and wasn't sure if she had sent some of these things to herself since they came from her address. She was pretty confused for a few days...
@byfaithonly (10698)
• United States
22 Jul 07
LOL - wanna hear a good one, few years back friends of mine who are missionaries in France got a virus on their computer that was sending emails to everyone in their address book - what was funny was the virus was taking stuff off their computer and sending it several bible programs, Christian music, and bible studies sent all over the world by a virus - one of those cases where God took a bad situation and used it for His good I guess.
@byfaithonly (10698)
• United States
22 Jul 07
Yep, love the way He works :)
Actually I have a 'junk' email account at hotmail and I regularly get messages that an email I sent couldn't be delivered - I never sent any emails at those times or to those people so sure it's someone who has stolen my information somehow...
People who forward and forward and forward emails with a million other people's email addresses does annoy me because I know their sending my address to tons of people I don't know.
@whyaskq (7523)
• Singapore
18 Jul 07
Thank god so far this has not happen to me, or that no one complain I spam them with junks. However, my friends have ever encountered such mails being send even when his computer was not switched on, or that he did not check mails on that date and time the junk mail was sent out. We can only conclude it was the work of some virus or some spammer who got hold of her email address and contact book. May I suggest to run a virus scan of the computer.
2 people like this
@kelly60 (4547)
• United States
19 Jul 07
I scan my computer regularly, and I know that the problem isn't on my end. Like I said, I think that my friend has gotten emails from those in her address book because she sends out all of the emails using their addresses. I never got spam at all until she started forwarding me her emails, and now I get it fairly often, so I'm sure that her emails are the cause of it too. I ignore anything that looks suspicious, no matter who it comes from, and my anti-virus has caught a couple of forwarded emails. I don't care who sent them or why, I don't take chances so I deleted them without opening them. She needs to scan her computer, and she also needs to stop forwarding so many of these emails to everyone. Thanks for your response.
@santuccie (3384)
• United States
18 Jul 07
Are you using Yahoo! Mail? Yahoo! is the biggest target in the world for data mining and account hijacking/spoofing. My suggestion to you would be to open a free account with Gmail, AOL, or someone that offers POP3/SMTP access with SSL session encryption, and learn to use a desktop client like Outlook or Thunderbird.
Also, make sure you have all the latest patches from Microsoft, as well as a full suite of security on your computer. Bare minimum, you need antivirus and antispyware with automatic updating, scheduled scanning, and real-time monitoring (and preferably e-mail scanning); as well as a firewall, preferably with Network-based Intrusion Prevention.
If you're unsure of your existing security software, there is a free, all-in-one suite called AOL Safety and Security Center that has everything I mentioned. It's lighter on resources than most of today's suites, yet it's quite sturdy. All you have to do is sign up for a free e-mail account with AOL, and it's all yours. And AOL Mail also offers whitelisting (not enabled by default), which I find much more effective than bayesian spam filters.
Here's how I avoid spam (and other forms of impropriety in my e-mail) in a bit more detail: http://reviews.cnet.com/5208-3513_7-0-10.html?forumID=104&messageID=2409256&threadID=222541
Hope this helps!
1 person likes this
@kelly60 (4547)
• United States
19 Jul 07
At the time, several years ago, when I used to get email from myself I was using Yahoo and was getting tons of spam from everywhere including myself. I have learned a lot about it over the past several years. I don't get these ones anymore. Now if I could just get rid of the PayPal and Ebay spoof emails!
@santuccie (3384)
• United States
19 Jul 07
Unless your computer is infected, which it may very well be, the methods I mention in the article at CNET can help you mitigate the problem. Here are the three scanners I most frequently recommend:
http://www.trendsecure.com/portal/en-US/free_security_tools/housecall_free_scan.php
http://www.ewido.net/en/
http://support.f-secure.com/enu/home/ols.shtml
And if your machine is indeed infected, you should tighten up security a bit after cleaning it with the online scanners. Bare minimum, you need antivirus and antispyware with automatic updating, scheduled scanning, and real-time monitoring (also "e-mail scanning" if you use a POP client like Outlook or Thunderbird), as well as a firewall, preferably with Network-based Intrusion Prevention. Here is a free, all-in-one suite with all these things: http://safety.aol.com/ssc_mcafee/index.adp?
Hope this helps!
@kelly60 (4547)
• United States
22 Jul 07
I'm sure that it isn't a problem with my computer since the only place I even get the spoof emails is in my Yahoo mail that I use only for my eBay transactions, so I'm not worried about that. Besides my antivirus is updated daily and I scan my computer regularly. I will pass the information along though. Thanks.
@kayrod2 (1304)
• Australia
18 Jul 07
It is such a shame that we cant trust where our emails come from these days. When i send emails now, i try to use the BCC for addresses, especially when sending to a few. I have heard that others then cant see other addresses.
Best wishes to you, kelly
@suspenseful (40193)
• Canada
26 Jan 08
I get spam email and one way to find out who is using your address is to "show all headers" it will then give you who it really is from. A lot of these spammers got your address from when you joined sites and BEFORE they gave you a choice as to not allowing third parties to have your address. I leave Yahoo to the spammers and am now using mostly gmail. Also if someone says that my Paypal or egold is in danger, I go to the actual Paypal and egold source.
