OT. Someone has my email address, please help

[Andrew Rudoff]

It is possible that your machine has a virus and that is sending the mail.
Virus programs often try to propagate themselves by sending themselves to
everyone in your address book.  Make sure your virus software is up to date
and scan your system.  But most of all, make sure you have all the latest
security updated from Microsoft -- another bunch of Windows vulnerabilities
were just announced in the past few days.

Another common thing for virus programs to do is to go through the address
book on the machine, sending messages, but forging the "From" address on
the message.  Email has no authentication built in to it, and that means
the From header can be set to whatever anyone wants.  So virus programs
try forging mail from random addresses (often also from the address book
on the infected machine) in order to make their mail look more trustworthy.
If someone else's machine has a virus, it may be sending mail forged from you.

It is also possible someone is sending mail as you.  But not very likely
since there isn't much advantage to doing that.

What can you do about it?  If it is a virus on someone else's computer,
or someone posing as you, there is nothing you can do about.  That's
just how email on the Internet works.  But as I said above, you can take
steps to make sure the mail isn't coming from a virus on your machine.

-andy

Benny L. Tucker wrote:

> Dear list,
>     I keep getting messages from people/companies all over the place saying
> that an email that I sent them is undeliverable/being returned due to the
> message being infected with a virus.
>     Problem is, I rarely send out messages, and have sent none to any of
> these addresses that say I have sent them infected email. The only thing I
> can figure is someone else is using my email address.
>     If anyone can tell me how to stop this, I would really appreciate it. I
> don't especially want to delete this email account, as most of my business
> contacts use it, along with this list and the ctuner list. All suggestions
> would be appreciated.
>     Thanks for your time.
> 
> Benny L. Tucker
> Yamaha Factory Tuner
> Precision Piano Tuning & Repair
> Thomaston, Ga.
> 
> 
> 
> ---
> Outgoing mail is certified Virus Free.
> Checked by AVG anti-virus system (http://www.grisoft.com).
> Version: 6.0.658 / Virus Database: 421 - Release Date: 4/9/2004
> 
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