Help, spam from my own account!

[Agnes]

Hi guys,

I, tech-tard, need some help on this one. Visiting my yahoo account, I found out I had Bulk mail. Imagine my surprise when I saw the sender supposedly was... ME! :eek:
What can I do to prevent this from happening again??? How do I protect my account properly?

Any advice would be welcome!

[paularoid]

There is only one thing you can do..... get off the internet.

I know that's not the answer you want to hear but I'm afraid it's the truth unfortunately. As soon as you get on the internet you're being tracked by someone or something and there's not really much you can do about it. I suppose if you NEVER, EVER entered your name or email address in any place at any time you might stand a chance but I wouldn't count on it.

I stand to be corrected.

[Dee]

Have you tried adjusting your SpamGuard settings in the Options menu? Maybe you can resolve things through that.

Ever since I set mine to automatically delete any suspected spam, I haven't been getting any in my Bulk folder.

Just a thought.

[aabram]

I remember a time when my Inbox emails got into my 'Trash' bucket for a few days, but I quickly transferred the ones I wanted to keep to my Inbox. It only went on for less than a week, and it was Yahoo's fault. I didn't say anything and it corrected itself :)

[SongDragon]

I'm looking at shifting my e-mail account to my university one, because I found out that one of the viruses I had took my account and has been sending out spam to people I don't even know. A lot of the time they seem to miss, and it comes back as a postmaster delivery status failure, but just seeing the number of those makes me feel really guilty for the names it must manage to hit...

So in a way I can commiserate, though it appears I'm the spammer rather than the one being spammed in this case. I just hate to abandon the e-mail address I've had since I was thirteen. Might try changing the password, first, since that's just as ancient. And yes, six years for an e-mail address is ancient.

~Song

[aabram]

I've had my hotmail account for 6 years!!!! and my main Yahoo account for 5, and Yahoo has lifted the limitation to the storage space. :) so I'm no longer "10% full" of anything :p I store everything in there now ;) saves carrying a memory stick around :)

[DaveM]

I've had the same Hotmail account since 1996. Mind, I rarely use it for anything other than a "dump address" when a web site asks for an e-mail. I go in once a week, delete everything (though once in a while, something interesting pops up), and have tweaked the settings on my "real" e-mail so that I rarely get any spam at all. So far, so good.

[Amy in Vermont]

....is not really from your own account. If you were to read the message headers you would see that the originating address (under the hood) is most likely somewhere in eastern Europe. Unfortunately, web based mail like Yahoo and Gmail and Hotmail do not nake it easy to view the entire header.

It's called "spoofing" an address and it happens all the time. There has been a recent wave of "self- addressed" spam, and I think you'll find it will die off in a few days. I got a few myself, and since I have my Out of Office message on, I got sent my own auto-reply!

Here's a copy of the message header. The actual path of th message can be followed by reading from the bottom up. My notes are in RED. Shark, Barracuda, Arcticcat and Firefly, and any IP address that starts with 140.233 are legit parts of our mail system.

Microsoft Mail Internet Headers Version 2.0
Received: from arcticcat.middlebury.edu ([140.233.2.8]) by firefly.middlebury.edu with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.1830);
Tue, 28 Aug 2007 14:37:57 -0400
Received: from shark.middlebury.edu ([140.233.2.16]) by arcticcat.middlebury.edu with Microsoft SMTPSVC(6.0.3790.1830);
Tue, 28 Aug 2007 14:37:57 -0400
X-ASG-Debug-ID: 1188326255-783c00300001-7sqB1A
X-Barracuda-URL: http://140.233.2.16:8000/cgi-bin/mark.cgi
X-Barracuda-Connect: pool-70-22-122-247.balt.east.verizon.net[70.22.122.247]
X-Barracuda-Start-Time: 1188326255
Received: from pool-70-22-122-247.balt.east.verizon.net (pool-70-22-122-247.balt.east.verizon.net [70.22.122.247]) (apparently this one lives in Baltimore and uses Verizon as an ISP)
by shark.middlebury.edu (Spam Firewall) with ESMTP id B15F62B5AD5
for <aehoffma@middlebury.edu>; Tue, 28 Aug 2007 14:37:55 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from [70.22.122.247] by ; Tue, 28 Aug 2007 13:31:44 -0500
Date: Tue, 28 Aug 2007 13:31:44 -0500
From: "Jay Kerns" <aehoffma@middlebury.edu> (note that the "sender's" display name shows, but his supposed email is mine!)
X-Mailer: The Bat! (v2.00.8) Business
Reply-To: aehoffma@middlebury.edu
X-Priority: 3 (Normal)
Message-ID: <828360459.81183578084355@middlebury.edu>
To: aehoffma@middlebury.edu
X-ASG-Orig-Subj: Look
Subject: Look
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset=iso-8859-2
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
X-Barracuda-Virus-Scanned: by Barracuda Spam Firewall at middlebury.edu
X-ASG-Whitelist: Sender (Per-User)
Return-Path: sbnb@boyner-holding.com.tr (actual sender address, in TURKEY)
X-OriginalArrivalTime: 28 Aug 2007 18:37:57.0308 (UTC) FILETIME=[8D9B2FC0:01C7E9A2]


So unless the message REALLY cam from your own account, do worry about your account having been hacked.

[Agnes]

Bwack, that doesn't sound good. I don't know what the header said, Amy. Too alarmed to think about that, I've just deleted the message.
And I've immediately changed my password.

Haven't had any messages after this one.

The "sender" looked like my ID, it wasn't my full name. What would that mean? Has my account been hacked? :eek::mad:

[Darlene]

My Long Distance Provider is AT&T and you would not believe what I got on there today! I am really not a prude but what I saw well, I can't even think about what I saw. And I didn't even open open it it was just there. If I had a child up until 18 I think I would make hem use it in a family room so that everyone could become poisoned at the same time and could share therapy sessions.

[aabram]

I had 40 ...yes FORTY.... junk emails today. How do I get them to stop sending them???? and how can I divert them to my Hot mail account which I don't use much any more???? I want my main Yahoo account back :(