How does your email become a spammer?

learnerplates · 01-02-2008 09:18AM #1

This may not be the exact forum but it's the closest I could find.

I've just received spam notiification from Frontbridge showing my blocked spam and one of the spam emails is sent from an email address the same as my own, how can this be?
How can spam be sent out from an email address the same as my own?

The email content is indeed spam!

DarkJager · 01-02-2008 09:24AM

Its possible you have been infected with a mailing worm of some sort. These can commonly infect a system and use your email accounts and address book to forward spam. Have you checked with anybody in your email address book to see if they have recieved spam from you?

As a start, I'd recommend downloading SpyBot - Search & Destroy from the following link. It should hopefully pick up on any infection that may be there and remove it.

http://fileforum.betanews.com/download/Spybot_Search_and_Destroy/1043809773/1

You could also try HijackThis:

http://www.trendsecure.com/portal/en-US/tools/security_tools/hijackthis

Run the program, let it scan the system and it should create a logfile for you in notepad. If you post that logfile here, I can take a better look at what may be affecting you.

Tragedy · 01-02-2008 09:27AM

Are you sure it isnt just the from field being the same as the to field?(As you can set who the e-mails from as being different as to where it actually originates).

I've gotten a couple of spam mails in the last week with my e-mail address being the from+to address on the spam.

learnerplates · 01-02-2008 11:54AM

yes the From and To fields are the same!
Does this mean that the spammer has just changed the sender to alias the receiver?

Tragedy · 01-02-2008 01:29PM

Yeah, i think its just another way to try bypass spam filters.

Check the headers and have a look to see where it came from to be sure though

How does your email become a spammer?

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