strange email sent from my yahoo email

[97tbird]

yeah several people have gotten this subject-less spam like email from my yahoo email address, and it has a bunch of links in it - looks like to all kinds of online stores etc etc ....

What can I do about this? I tried to send a warning email to ALL my contacts to explain that I did not send that email, but as it had too many addresses, yahoo doesn't let me send it, thinking that I maybe trying to spam... wth?

 

[Quest]

Me personally would ignore this email as if nothing else had happened.

emailing back will trigger the bots, letting them know that your email address does EXISTS and will only bring you more spam.

Q.

 

[97tbird]

Thanks
no i didn't have anyone to e-mail "BACK"; it was sent from MY email address, and i was trying to email all my contacts to "warn"/explain this email.

 

[eljefino]

People you know or people you don't know?

Could be a third party's contacts (you and your friends) were compromised or glommed from a forwarded email. Your return address was spoofed as a way to get through their spam blockers. I would let it slide and take no further action.

The big web based email addresses are good in a way as being less likely to be a rogue virus infected computer spewing lots out through its ISP's POP...

 

[97tbird]

People I know.
a few of them emailed me and asked if i had sent that email - that's how I got to know; they know that I won't send such emails, so I am glad they were careful and double checked with me...

 

[Quest]

Someone who possesses your email address in their local Outlook/Outlook express box their PC has been compromised by bots (trojans of some sort) and thus the "bot" harvests the saved email addresses and uses them for mass spamming.

So long as you do not touch on them in a form of email replys, you'll be fine. Those email recipient(s) that you have concerns of, consider doing a quick 10 sec phone call to confirm your status with them (tell them you did not send it out from your box and ask them to perform an AV scan).

Also: while you are at it: update your AV and perform a scan (even though you may not be "ground zero" to begin with, it's not a bad practice to perform a scan regardless).

Q.

 

[SrDriver]

After you make sure your computer is not infected with a Trojan, etc., recommend that you change your email account to another provider like Gmail, GMX, Live, etc.

Notify folks of the new account.

 

[97tbird]

Thanks. Doing an Avira scan now..

do I really need to change to a different email provider ??

does Gmail and/or Live offer some sort of address book migration tool?

 

[SrDriver]

Yes both have features where you can have your yahoo or other accounts forward to your new account so you have time to notify folks of your new account.

Check out both web sites and see what they offer for you.

I use both. Live offers POP3 and web based email. Gmail offers POP3, IMAP, and web based email.

GMX offers POP3, IMAP, and web based email.

Check them out and see what features they offer than you are interested in. We use a GMX and Gmail IMAP account in the family here and have for a long time.

You can setup the accounts in your favorite email program or access them through your web browser.

Have you scanned your system with some of the anti-scumbware software like Mailwarebytes, etc?

 

[97tbird]

i run scans with MWB, CCleaner, Avira and SAS every 2-3 weeks... (once a week with Avira actually)
perh. I should use them more often.

do I really need to change to a different email provider, because of what happened ??

I am going to see if this happens again. meanwhile I will explore some of gamil, Live etc in case I do need to switch..

 

[Rand]

Someone else spoofing your email address to other people

 

[97tbird]

Is there any solution to this?

 

[Rand]

tell your friends who have you in their address book to run virus/malware scan

as an example my stepmom got a virus..

and it was mailing with her earthlink account and spoofing it like it was me mailing her friends.

you can read the raw email message and see where it came from..

the visible address can be spoofed but the raw routing information in the email cant be easily spoofed.

I think in outlook its "view source" or something similar to see the raw text of the email.

 

[Rand]

in gmail its "show orginal"

here is an excerpt from an email I got from "funcom"

obiviously its alot easier to read the normal email.. but for purposes of seeing who it actually came from....




Delivered-To: me
Received: by 10.216.17.137 with SMTP id j9cs419217wej;
Sat, 19 Dec 2009 11:04:17 -0800 (PST)
Received: by 10.223.62.11 with SMTP id v11mr1050092fah.60.1261249455305;
Sat, 19 Dec 2009 11:04:15 -0800 (PST)
Return-Path:
Received: from newsletter.funcom.com (newsletter.funcom.com [194.0.169.169])
by mx.google.com with ESMTP id 22si9702747fxm.7.2009.12.19.11.04.14;
Sat, 19 Dec 2009 11:04:14 -0800 (PST)
Received-SPF: pass (google.com: domain of [email protected] designates 194.0.169.169 as permitted sender) client-ip=194.0.169.169;
Authentication-Results: mx.google.com; spf=pass (google.com: domain of [email protected] designates 194.0.169.169 as permitted sender) [email protected]; dkim=pass [email protected]
Received: from newsletter.funcom.com ([194.0.169.168])
by newsletter.funcom.com (StrongMail Enterprise 4.1.2(4.1.2-51177)); Sat, 19 Dec 2009 19:55:17 +0100
X-VirtualServer: Default, newsletter.funcom.com, 194.0.169.169
X-VirtualServerGroup: Default
X-MailingID: 1194962425::9000::6600::5600::1691588::1691588
X-SMHeaderMap: mid="X-MailingID"
X-Mailer: StrongMail Enterprise 4.1.2(4.1.2-51177)
X-Destination-ID: [email protected]
X-SMFBL: cmFuZGk0bmlAZ21haWwuY29t
DomainKey-Signature: a=rsa-sha1;
c=nofws;
s=customer;
d=newsletter.funcom.com;
q=dns;
b=V4DM1dAPMeI1IFTc4JPH6m9DP72a5Q5SmYHr4x9ETpDX6veKp4kxXscUZp1vWXAt7VWreX41MVnO54TsirH6Dw9W0us2SX7hGFhHeH7aiY/wedfAiyVsE+Id9u34oya/8TWd+FzFBW2nb+OrdeyyRdpfvkincEk2trBXcqbhwkA=
DKIM-Signature: v=1; a=rsa-sha1; c=simple;
d=newsletter.funcom.com; s=customer; [email protected];
h=Content-Transfer-Encoding:Content-Type:List-Unsubscribe:
Reply-To:MIME-Version:Message-ID:Subjectate:To:From; bh=28ShSb
YA5bkE5ot8joesnE/vMp0=; b=h9gf7M2okUywlOUWC0THVCYFk0kQ+U60Lsv8rB
e6MPXddsOhnBJ9t1SGxhKHMtAplSkAB8soB/kuqqW9NCD4HxxFeftMgK13pWTQpa
GvMFTphZFxgwQemWCkD3OupNM2+1/WhplIWIm1Iyc4RW4R+aNovoC2iTGxaoUeRs
0wCXU=
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary="----=_NextPart_001_AEA6_74B0DC51.19495CFF"
List-Unsubscribe: /www.ageofconan.com/funcomnews/?action=unsubscribe&[email protected]>
Reply-To: [email protected]
MIME-Version: 1.0
Message-ID:
Subject: Funcom giving away EPIC loot
Date: Sat, 19 Dec 2009 19:55:17 +0100
To: [email protected]
From: "Funcom"


------=_NextPart_001_AEA6_74B0DC51.19495CFF
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="UTF-8"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline

This email is being sent to you because you have shown an interest in Funcom products.
You may unsubscribe from this publication at any time: http://www.ageofconan.com/funcomnews/?action=unsubscribe&[email protected]

--------------------------------

Join Funcom's Twitter and Facebook and Win EPIC Loot!

--------------------------------

The holiday season is upon us, and Funcom is ready to give away some heroic prizes! All you have to do is join our Twitter streams and Facebook pages to win.

 

[CivicFan]

Originally Posted By: Rand
Someone else spoofing your email address to other people


+1 I see this happen to me sometimes, too. I learn of this with spam that was sent to an address that did not exist.

I don't worry about this. Most of the spam now is caught by filters so most people don't see these kind of messages in the inbox.

 

[youdontwannaknow]

Originally Posted By: 97tbird
Is there any solution to this?

if you did not find any malware on your pc chances are you might have entered your email login information on any site other than the email provider itself.
For example sites that will offer to send an email or reference or something on your behalf to everyone in your address book.
I don't do this even on well known legit sites like facebook, linkedin etc. Its an absolute no-no, you just dont do it. You never enter login information meant for one site/purpose on any other!!
Thats it, thats the solution.

 

[GHW]

I had this problem happening with my Yahoo mail account a couple months ago. Have you tried changing your log on password yet?
One of my co-workers suggested to me to change my password which I did. Haven't had the problem since.