OT. Someone has my email address, please help

[Allan Gilreath]

Benny,

Andy's right that there's not much we can do about it.  I sometimes get
responses like that to the SERVP@ptg.org address which is merely an
alias that forwards mail to my regular account.  Since my virus
protection software updates regularly and I never use that account to
send mail it's obviously someone using that address as a phony header.
It happens and it's what spammers do to try to get around lists of known
spam addresses.  There are authentication that Microsoft and several
other companies are playing with but nothing that's in place yet.

Wish I could be of more help,

Allan L. Gilreath, RPT
Allan Gilreath & Associates, Inc.
515 Oothcalooga St., Suite I
Calhoun, GA 30701
agilreath@mindspring.com
 

-----Original Message-----
From: pianotech-bounces@ptg.org [mailto:pianotech-bounces@ptg.org] On
Behalf Of Andrew Rudoff
Sent: Wednesday, April 14, 2004 9:46 PM
To: Pianotech
Subject: Re: OT. Someone has my email address, please help

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
> 
> _______________________________________________
> pianotech list info: https://www.moypiano.com/resources/#archives
_______________________________________________
pianotech list info: https://www.moypiano.com/resources/#archives