mailer demons

[bumper9]

My computer is sending out arbitrary emails and I keep getting hundreds of mailer demons in my spam folder. Is my computer at risk? Do I have a virus? Please help me fix this.

 

[damber]

mailer demons in my spam folder

Do you mean SPAM ? or NDR's ? (Non-Delivery Reports) or is it some kind of security response message from SPAM prevention software / Mail Servers?

How do you know your computer is sending out mails ? What do they contain ?

If it really is, then you are likely to be a spam bot probably created by a virus/trojan of some sort or (quite unlikely) a direct hack.

Either way you are in trouble !

I suggest that you run some free online virus scanners to see if they detect anything (I'm assuming your Antivirus has not picked this up).

http://www.pandasoftware.com/products/ActiveScan.htm

http://security.symantec.com/sscv6/default.asp?productid=symhome&langid=ie&venid=sym

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

If they find it and remove it succesfully, uninstall your current Antivirus (if you have one) and re-install it and update the virus definitions.

Personally I would re-install the OS and make sure that my antivirus was good enough to cope with catching these before they become a problem... though AV is really a last line of defence - make sure you have a firewall installed - there are plenty of free ones out there - just google for it (Sygate and ZoneLabs are worth looking at).

You should also install and use regularly some antispyware apps, there are loads to choose from; Spybot S&D, AdAware and Microsofts AntiSpyware together seem to do a good job.

There are plenty of other simple security tips to ensure this doesn't happen again - google for them, use them and share them.

A smile is worth a thousand kind words. So smile, it's easy!

 

[bumper9]

Damber,
Thanks for all your support. the emails are NDR's that just end up in my spam folder (I should have clarified..sorry) the emails contain a message that says it could not be delivered from my address. I have a catch all email address so all of the emails that are returned have different user names but say it came from me. Here is an example....



From: "DO NOT REPLY" <noreply@hostasaurus.com>
SpamShield Pro Actions...BLOCK senders & move to: TrashApprove senders and move to InBox




To: adazieglergt@slickroads.com




Subject: Your message, "3 days to pearly whites", has been BLOCKED




Date: Fri 04 Nov 2005 02:13 PM



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Attention: adazieglergt@slickroads.com


Questionable content was found in an email message you sent.
The message was blocked from reaching its destination.

The Questionable content was reported to be:

Content blocked by software testing.
Testing your email with detection software produced a result
that indicates your mail could be unsolicited commercial
advertising or other restricted content. These testing
results are based on established junkmail characteristics.



Your message was sent with the following envelope:

MAIL FROM: adazieglergt@slickroads.com
RCPT TO: macdonald@artgeo.com

... and with the following headers:

---
MAILFROM: adazieglergt@slickroads.com
Received: from bsn-77-236-75.dial-up.dsl.siol.net (HELO efxcom.com) (193.77.236.75)
by smtpgw4-mx3.hostasaurus.com with SMTP; 4 Nov 2005 22:13:54 -0000
Message-ID: <436BDD5F.D40D2FD7@slickroads.com>
From: "Ada Ziegler" <adazieglergt@slickroads.com>
Subject: =?iso-8859-1?B?MyBkYXlzIHRvIHBlYXJseSB3aGl0ZXM=?=
Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2005 22:14:55 +0000
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Sender: <adazieglergt@slickroads.com>
In-Reply-To: <f00f01c5deec$ef2100de$64931158@3prwa81>
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.001 (windows; U; NT4.0; en-us) Gecko/25250101
Content-Type: text/plain;
charset="us-ascii"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit
X-Antivirus: avast! (VPS 0544-7, 03.11.2005), Outbound message
X-Antivirus-Status: Clean


Thanks again for your help.
Bumper

 

[TAiNiUM]

It could be also someone is "spoofing" your email address and mass sending emails. You might want to check and see if that email was actually sent from your organization.