e-mail address hijacked! help!

[SLO-BOB]

My outlook is filling up with thousands of failed delivery returns. I'm guessing someone who has my e-mail addy got a virus, it got a hold of my address and now is sending "Feel yourself a King- classic replica watches for sale." to everyone on the planet! My inbox is getting about 2000 returns an hour.

What can I do?

[legion]

Change your password, contact your ISP.

[jrdavid68]

I don't think changing your password will help (but never a bad idea to do from time to time) as all the spammer is doing is using your email address to "spoof" the Sender address. Anything that gets rejected gets redirected to you.

Who is your ISP? There may be some things you can do with your account.

[Tervuren]

Its not that your account is hi-jacked, they are using the email address. I have my own domain name, and receive all mail to that domain. As it used to be a fairly major site, lots of spam engines picked it up.

I get all sorts of types, including the same "mail returned" you are, to random email address I have never given out at all.

What I do, is when I meet someone new, and do not want their message to get accidently deleted, I give them a unique email address to mail me at, I then set up a message rule for that one, and have a seperate folder to keep just the real messages.

Also, whenever I sign up to ANYTHING online, I give it a specific email address, if possible, with the website's name in the address. That way, I can tell if they've sold that email.

I know Sony did. Was funny to get these promotions to "Sonyspam@........ .com"

[WolfeMacleod]

You've been Joe-jobbed

Someone is sending spam and using your address as the return.

If you will copy and paste the ENTIRE headers and content of one of them in a PM to me, I may be able to help you find who's responsible. I am an avid-anti spammer and LOVE hunting spammers in my free time.

As with Tervuren, I also make a specific email account for everywhere I purchase something or sign upo for something, but I take it one step further.
For example, if I buy something from Amazon.com I will start an email address such as Amazon_dot_com@wherever. Spammers cannot auto-generate the underscore when generating addresses to spam. If the account gets spam, it is absolute proof that the company or website has sold or otherwise distributed the email address. I have hundreds of addresses like that using Hotmail.

If we discover who Joe-Jobbed, you, I suggest you contact Dietrich Biemiller who is one of the most prominent spam-fighting attourneys in the USA.

[SLO-BOB]

Thanks everyone for the help!

Wolfe-I sent you a pm with the header info. Fingers crossed. Great info. Especially the underscore.

Weird thing is it grabbed my roadrunner e-mail which a rarely use. I reserve it for about a dozen people. I NEVER use it for online ordering etc. I have a few Yahoo accounts for that that naturally fill up with a dozen spam a day, but NOTHING like this! I open my outlook express and there will be 2k+ returned e-mails!

I contacted my ISP. They were not a big help. They said it's originating from my computer, but if that were so, wouldn't it show up as "sent" e-mail. Also, there is nothing in my outbox.

My daughters computer has a number of viruses. My outlook addy is on that one too. I'm trying to flush it out right now, but I've disconnected it off of our network for the time being.

Basic question-To get a virus, does one have to open an attachment or download something?

Thanks again for all your help. No matter what the problem, I always come here for advice first. You guys are the best!

[928ram]

I recently had the same thing with my primary e-mail, dozens of "mail returned-undeliverable" messages. I just checked my mail at the ISP's portal for a couple of days and "report as spam"-ed them all and they stopped.

Don't know if this is an option with yahoo and roadrunner accounts.

[fastpat]

Never use Outlook, it's notoriously vulnerable.

[jrdavid68]

Originally posted by fastpat
Never use Outlook, it's notoriously vulnerable.

How is Outlook the problem?

[widebody911]

Originally posted by jrdavid68
How is Outlook the problem?

Outlook address books are the favorite target of worm writers.

Having said that, you should really give your computer a good de-lousing. Dollars to donuts sez you have some sort of virus or worm infection, which the the root source of the problem. In the old days, viruses were just a PITA and deleted stuff; now they turn your PC into a spam-sending zombie: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Botnet

[Wrecked944]

This is a very timely thread. I am getting the same thing from my fasterfasterfaster.com website. The spammer appears to be this dude...

info@fastrich.com
From: Ward Boyer
Subject: In the Heart of Your Business!

With my email address in the "FROM" field...so who is Ward Boyer and how can I find out where he lives?

[widebody911]

Originally posted by JanusCole
This is a very timely thread. I am getting the same thing from my fasterfasterfaster.com website. The spammer appears to be this dude...

Who is "General Failure" and why is he reading my hard drive?

Calm down - it's all forged. A spammer would never put his real name in an message.

[jrdavid68]

Originally posted by widebody911
Outlook address books are the favorite target of worm writers.

That's correct, but it still doesn't make Outlook the culprit. If a worm has gotten in and taken over, then the user has not been updating the OS in a timely fashion.

In other words, "It's Bush's fault".

[HardDrive]

Originally posted by fastpat
Never use Outlook, it's notoriously vulnerable.

Absolute rubbish.

Yes, a computer that is not running effect anti-virus would a open to attack, and yes, Outlook address books are a vector for worm propagation. But the problem is not with outlook.....

You can configure a rule that imediately deletes any message that has 'Mail Delivery' in the subject line. You will still be getting them, but they will be deleted as they arrive.

If you are using outlook express, select one of the messages, then select the Message menu at the top. From that menu, select 'Create rule from message'. From there, make sure that 'Where the subject line contains specific words' is the only book checked in the top box, 'delete it' is checked in the second box, then in the bottom box, configure the words to be 'Mail Delivery', or whatever the subject line is thats coming back.

Wait it out. There is effectively nothing you can do at this point because you are dealing with and ISP (who sounds like they don't know their head from their ass.) I had this happen last year. It will subside within typcially within 24 hours.

Feel free to pm me.