Junk E-Mails From Self

Blue Moon 7

Blue Moon 7

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Chris
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Knowing next to nowt about computers I thought I had better ask on here about a problem I appear to be having recently.

I am getting e-mails (junk / spam) that appear to be being sent from my e-mail address. I have Norton internet security installed and update every week. How is this happening and how can I stop it. Are they actually coming from my PC?

Hope this makes sense to someone.

Chris :)
 
No, it's called spoofing. The sender shown can be anything, whatever is in the header and can pretend to be from anyone. Often valid email addresses are spoofed like this so the bounced mail from the anti-spam ends up somewhere. I've had an email address spoofed like this a couple of times and ended up with 1000's of returned mail pouring through my mailbox :(
 
Am I best putting these in the norton spam file / blocker in my Outlook so they just go straight into there?

Chris :)
 
i've just started getting these too.
its a right pain in the bum
i dont have a spam filter, i just set my e-mail to put anything from someone i've never e-mailed into a junk folder. but now i'm getting messages from myself i'm going to have to add an exception
 
Unfortunately, spammers generally fake the "From:" address when they send unsolicited messages, and often use either valid or randomly-generated addresses at innocent peoples domain names.

For example, if your domain name is example.com, they may prepend common names or even random strings, to produce email addresses like bob@example.com, john@example.com or sdwxxvtw@example.com.

Another trick spammers often use is to set the From: address to be the same as the recipient's address, in the hopes of bypassing spam filters.

It does not mean that your account has been compromised in any way; due to the design of the SMTP protocol it's trivial to set the From: header to whatever you want it to be. You could make it read bill.gates@microsoft.com without having to have access to his account.

Often when spammers perform a spam run using forged addresses like this, some of the messages they send will generate bounce-backs or other automated replies, which will often be delivered back to the innocent party whose email address or domain name was used in the forged From: header.

Currently, there's little that can be done to stop this from happening, and it is a common problem.
 
Thanks to all for the explanations. Sometimes technology is a pain in the backside eh!!!


Chris :)
 
Indeed it is! We had someone do this to us at work recently and it resulted in every undeliverable email being sent to our "catch all" inbox. We received over 11000 emails. Believe me, it caused havoc for 48hrs :bat:
 
Grendel said:
Indeed it is! We had someone do this to us at work recently and it resulted in every undeliverable email being sent to our "catch all" inbox. We received over 11000 emails. Believe me, it caused havoc for 48hrs :bat:
Click to expand...

beat my record there then, we had 10,378 come in one day...luckily we have a VPS at work, so i was able to go to webmail and filter it down to around 1500!
 
I get these, they go straight to my spam box but I can't help thinking that if I hadn't opened the very first one I got thinking it had gone into my spam by mistake then it wouldn't have realised it was a real address and now I get them :bonk::bang::thumbsdown::cuckoo::razz:
 
Check the header - normally View > All Headers - you'll be able to see the originating email address... I use my Gmail account for most of my day-to-day stuff, it's got a brilliant spam filter.
 
It's that good a spam filter, everything that comes from our rugby website goes straight into it..........even though I have said it's not spam:|
 
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