A friend reports that she has received an e-mail from me, selling a drug. The spam e-mail is purportedly from my usual e-mail address. It not only has my address but is headed with a list of several addresses, such as you see when somebody has copied an e-mail to several people. These are all addresses of people in my e-mail address history, some recent but some not addressed for months or even a year,including my bank manager.

Soon after I got a series of Mailer Daemon 'failed to connect' messages describing how 'my' e-mail, had not reached the addressee, often because of a spam filter, sometimes because they were 'noreply@' addresses. I also received some standard 'out of office' automated replies.

What's happening? How do I stop it ?

I got one from "you", Fred, but I just assumed that the local villagers stopped paying rent.


I can't help on how to stop it. I get a few every month, often addressed to adminATanswerpool.com. Yes, they usually say "Dear Admin..."

My yahoo account was hacked recently... Change your password... I changed mine within 30 minutes of this happening... I also 'jammed' my account's ability to send ANY emails for 24 hrs by sending 'spam'... sending too many mass mailings without typing the security passwords correctly. Good Luck

I used to have Very Bad spam on Yahoo
But I filtered it all out in about 20 filters and All personal Contact removed or Given my AOL Address

We come to AOL and again we get Spam But The Filters Can be Difficult to access even from the Mail bar an Like Fred Have Had some of those Mails (But I Ignore them (and the Nigerian email and the Banking "mails" addresses Both to me and Bounced off Gmail


Was up to 50 per day now its down to 2 or 3 per day (and No Mail Daemons)


How did I achieve this? Well Its having a Gmail account thats the Secret

Gmail Has a very good Mail Filter System
And If some Body sent a Smam in My Direction It will Be Bounce By Google Server Then Bounced by the Filter I set Forwarded Onto Another Email Account where the Filter set there will determine if its displayed

I Have all my Answerpool and other Notifications routed this way bar DP which goes to Yahoo

And Prior to Me using Gmail as my landing Point for this Sites Posts I was getting them Bounced Back at AP at a rate of Better than 6 in 10 Now its 0 in 10 and the Odd Post that gets trapped is Not Bounced

It Does Take a bit of toing and froing to set it up Forward Mail between Different Mail account With Google The controls are easy to understand ,Yahoo comes a respectable 2nd
To start the Transfer set up open Gmail up clocking on Settings then POP and Forwarding

Enable Both the POP and the IMAP settings
then In the Other setting Box (which Hasent Copied The address of your Other Email acount (will have to login with The Password for that mailbox)

quote:

Forward a copy of incoming mail to Your [EMAIL]MY Other mail box @ the other place.com [/EMAIL] and keep Google Mail's copy in the Inbox

Other Menu options are:

mark Google Mail's copy as read
archive Google Mail's copy
delete Google Mail's copy

ip: You can also forward only some of your mail by creating a filter!
Googles advice Not Mine Very Difficult in Practice

The end result is that Your Mail gets through but has been at least double Filtered

Another Way of Doing ths but is Moer work to set up is to install the free Zimbra email client Program which Integrates your selected Mail streams and you can work offline too reading Messages
Only snag It can use up a Lot of Drive space if you Have like me a Google Mailbox approaching 8K Posts Plus a few K from elsewhere

BIG Con Is They are retained Here until deleted and Deleting on the account Proper won't delete at Zimbra Unless the Program is updated using the Syncing Feature which sometimes does not work

They'll get it right one day
www.zimbra.com

If you want a Go Expect it to use at Least 100MB drive space for offline storage

Bedstor, if read your post right, you addressed getting spam. I think Fred was asking how to prevent his address book from being used. I realize that getting spam is part of having one's address book used, but gmail doesn't prevent the stealing of one's address book. I know because I've gotten mail from myself, through my AP address, and I have gmail.

If the address list is Being directly compromised on the computer then the only way of detecting how its being transmitted is to hunt down the trojan using a HJT log and once identified and its Purged update the Antivirus and Antispyware defences

CON If those updates are Done first That File will still be Broadcasting

The first question to ask ourselves is which
computer is Doing the Dirty?
and a secondary but important question what other computer/s local to Freds List/s are also displaying these symptoms?

These must be Brought in for Purging too!


But they can Been seen by a computer repair Guy For all we Know Fred is at the Base of the Pyramid?

All we do is snap the chain @ Freds Level and close the Hole.

An Idea which occurred to me which will block that path is to examine what is Happening to Freds Firewall
2 questions for Fred:
1) What Email program is your Contacts stored on?
And 2) What is the Firewalls Name or names on the Computer/s? You aren't running (any of ) your Computer(s) on Windows Firewall?


I Have got into the Habit of using the same Programs for security on the computers in this house and I can fix them fast

Bad news if I used several different Programs
I'd be scratching My head and Burning the Midnight oil