Off-topic post here: My email seems to have been corrupted in some way or another, and I don't know what to do. I've been getting dozens of "returned" emails that are spam mailings sent with my return address, albeit with somebody else's name attributed to it. (e.g. From: "Arthur Weiss" <bwillia0@yahoo.com>).

Do I have any recourse here or should I just close the account and start a new one somewhere? And if so, can anybody recommend a good email host?

Thanks in advance,

A very irritated Alex Williams

Oh man, that's horrible! I have a couple of Yahoo! accounts, and so far so good... I wonder if it'd be possible to contact the powers-that-be there?

I think this is a spammer technique. Probably Rubrick, Max or musick would be able to say more.

In reply to:

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I think this is a spammer technique. Probably Rubrick, Max or musick would be able to say more.

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The thing is, I am getting "returns" from dozens of different domains:

postmaster@ resenterprises.com
MAILER-DAEMON@ mx.gwi.net
MAILER-DAEMON@ geocities.com
postmaster@npi.net
MAILER-DAEMON@ eve.nldesign.com
MAILER-DAEMON@ mail.mc.net
MAILER-DAEMON@ mail.bpsinet.com
etc


I think I am just going to bag it and start a new account somewhere.

how long has this been going on? sometimes it's best to sit on it a bit and see if it will go away.
as far as an email accounts go, I'm a strong believer in your local ISP(Internet Service Provider). how are you getting on-line? is there an email component to that service?

Alex - If you start a new account and it continues... your machine is the culprit.

If not, you may be being spoofed by a server with the Klez virus(just a guess).

I am pretty sure that my personal email address has been spoofed by spammers and inserted as the reply-to address on their mass mailings. Here's a link to an interesting article from soomeone who had the exact same experience as I am having now:

http://www.techdirt.com/fotr/20030211/0230225_F.shtml My Short Life As An Unintentional Spammer by Mike Masnick

Oh my gosh, Alex--I just read the article. That is terrible! How do these people get our addresses? Buy them from some place we've legitimately contacted for whatever reason (contest entry, etc.)? Pluck it out of thin air? Scary!
Ignorant as I was (and still am) about the internet, I did have the strong feeling that it wouldn't be a good idea to use my name as part of my e-mail address, when I first got my computer. It came with so many minutes free if you signed up on AOL , and that's one of the things that made me not sign up with them (whew)--my first submission was already taken, and they gave me a "suggestion" consisting of parts of my actual name. I exited. I imagine it would be fairly easy to find an active account by guesswork, using a huge place like yahoo, say, and trying common names/nicknames.

I had this for a couple of days at the beginning of the year on my hotmail account. I was inundated with undeliverable messages and one message from somebody complaining about what "I" had sent. I apologised, explained that it wasn't me, and advised them that responding to spam wasn't a good idea.

I also complained to hotmail because I was worried this meant that someone had access to my account -- which has some very personal stuff on it. This is what I got back:

Hello bingley,

Thank you for writing to MSN Hotmail.
I'm Davie and I am responding to your complaint that your account is being used
for spam.
I apologize for the inconvenience you have experienced. I can understand your
concern on having your address associated with unsolicited emails.
I have researched your account and it appears you are the only person logging
into it. For security, we would suggest changing your password and Secret
Question/Answer at this time. A good rule of thumb is to change your passwords
regularly.
Someone has forged, your e-mail address as the 'reply-to' or "from" field on a
piece of unsolicited e-mail. This does not require the person to log into the
account. Most likely, it was either a typographical error on the sender's part."
Should you have other concerns please feel free to contact MSN Hotmail Customer
Support again.


Sincerely,

Davie
MSN Hotmail Customer Support



Bingley

I have also received e-mails like those you describe. After opening one or two I discovered that it was a more elaborate form of spamming and now I just delete. There have been fewer and fewer in my inbox as time goes by. Unless you are very unhappy with your e-mail box for additional reasons, just ride it out.

I think this is a spammer technique. Probably Rubrick, Max or musick would be able to say more.

Four things:

1. Don't subscribe to mailing lists
2. When you forward on mail - make sure to delete all the forwarded addresses contained in the body. Also BCC names rather than CC or include them in your To: line
3. Filter
4. Dont' reply to the mail or click on the unsubscribe link You will be spammed for life.

Finally, contacting Yahoo! MSN or the other web mail companies won't make any difference. They are giving you a free email so why should they do anything else for you?

If you really want to avoid spam then use a Unix based mailer instead of a web-based one. Get Pine or Eudora or else install Linux OS and use their platform. You can then get an easy to install spam filter which will include black and white lists which shoudl filter out most of your unwanted mail. I get about five spams a day into my in box but my black list folder collects about 250 a day. You can't stop the crap coming to you but at least you can control where it goes.

one more bit of info about this spoofing stuff:

http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.klez.h@mm.html

hope that's not too long...