Please Help with E-Mail problem

[telcorookie]

Hi all, i wanna first start off by saying that i have been working with computers since 94' and this problem has me stumped.. Of course i am older and not keeping up like you young bucks out there.

I am getting really strange e-mails in my inbox. Its always from a postmaster of some sort telling me the e-mails i tried to send were no good. First of all, i don't send e-mails out very often. Second, i have NO clue who these people are. And the e-mails are always about vitamins and health products as the subject. No viagra or enlargements.. none of that stuff. Just vitamins of some sort.

I also ONLY use my web base e-mail. Never use any programs like outlook or outlook express.

The Name will be something weird like Nancy Blane and her e-mail is mine?? And this nancy example is useing my e-mail to send e-mails to lots of people. But its not only that name, its always a differnt name. Just my e-mail next to it. grrrr...

I called Godaddy and they said there was nothing they can do about it.

Any tips, tricks or help would be appreciated..

Thank You
Sorry so long winded

 

[Turkbear]

Hi,
Not all of us are young bucks - I have been working with computers since '85 or so.

That problem usually happens when your email account has been hijacked somehow - I had that problem with one of my email accounts a few years ago and eventually had to drop the account and set up a new one.


Today, some of the malware scanners can find out if your PC has been compromised by a trojan, so try running something like malwarebytes:

http://www.malwarebytes.org/

To Paraphrase:"The Help you get is proportional to the Help you give.."

 

[linney]

Mailer Daemon or whatever the name is, has often been used by spammers to temp the unwary into opening their spam, I think it is referred to as social engineering, that being where you rely on human behavior to get people to do something they might not want to do if they knew the consequences.

Advertising your E-mail address in public is not advisable either as spammers troll for E-mail addresses and sell them on to their "friends".

Probably your best defense is to change your E-mail address, and let the spammers get a few genuine Mailer Daemon notices themselves.

http://www.google.com.au/search?q=m...&ie=&oe=&redir_esc=&ei=bY-tS6n4EMyGkAWA0dGhDQ

I see lots of recommendations here for programs like -

Malwarebytes' Anti-Malware

http://www.malwarebytes.org/mbam.php

SuperAntispyware

http://superantispyware.com/

 

[Sympology]

People may be barking up the wrong tree.
As you point out you use a web based email and going by the fact that you mentioned godaddy, I presume you have some sort of hosted domain. So unless they have an issue with their servers

Unfortutnaltey, this may have absoloutely nothing to do with your pc or your host. It's simply people spoofing your email address and I hate to say this, but there is absoloutly NOTHING you can do about it.
The only thing is to change you domain, but of course that could be a no no.

Sorry to break bad news to you.



Robert Wilensky:
We've all heard that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters will eventually reproduce the entire works of Shakespeare. Now, thanks to the Internet, we know this is not true.

 

[gbaughma]

Yeah.... it sounds spoofed to me as well, and it sounds like what's happening is this:

A spam email is generated with YOUR address as the sending address. It's TO address is something bogus.

Next, send it to your email server. Your email server tries to deliver it to the bogus address, can't, and returns it to... guess who? YOU (because you're in the FROM address).

Meanwhile, you get an email from your own email program (postmaster or Mailer Daemon) saying that it couldn't deliver the email, returning it to the only email address that it does have, yours.

But, for it to work that way (in the way I described) your email server has to be willing to accept an unverified email from outside of your system as if it was sent to from you to begin with.

Solution: Make sure that your email requires authentication to SEND email. Oh, and change your email password as well.



Just my 2¢

"What the captain doesn't realize is that we've secretly replaced his Dilithium Crystals with new Folger's Crystals."

--Greg

http://parallel.tzo.com