Posted on 04/15/2008 8:33:02 PM PDT by Retired Chemist
My Hotmail account is being bombarded with undeliverable mail messages that I did not send. They are in a foreign language. Any ideas as to what is going on. I have sent a message to MSN support.
you should NOT have purchased the reduced price generik viagra. The stuff is rat poisoning and lead, AND you stay on their mailing list forever.
Someone is spamming using your account. You may have used your name and pw on a questionable website.
Someone is using your email address to send forged spam mail. The bounced mail comes to you because that’s where it looks like it came from.
This is known as ‘back-scatter’ mail.
Sounds to this poster, like a spammer has gotten ahold of your email address, and is spamming with your email, as the return address.
Not sure if they do this randomly, going through potential hotmail email accounts in sequence - or whether they somehow figured out it’s a real account. Could even be someone you correspond with, got a virus which sent your address somewhere.
That would be my guess. Not sure how you can “fix” it. Sorry I’m not more help.
If they're undeliverable, how are you getting them?
I have changed my password.
Where have you logged in?
Change your account password, available at “Account”
Also, run a virus scan on your hard drive.
That isn't unnecessarily true. Anyone can take an address and make it appear to be a sender of mail. Spammers do this all of the time. Straight Vermonter's information didn't have to be compromised for this to happen. When the spam hits a nonexistent mailbox, which can happen hundreds or even thousands of times in a single dictionary attack, all of the messages are bounced back to where the message APPEARED to be from, which in this case was a forged address.
Hopefully that will stop it. Never use your email pw for anything else.
Don't worry about it, see my posts and #5. Most likely some spammer got your email address and is using it to forge spam mail. About the only thing you can do to stop it is to change your email address. Even the best spam filtering systems can't do much to stop 'backscatter' messages, without blocking legit bounce messages, which are very important for troubleshooting and should almost never be blocked.
If someone had hijacked my account and was sending messages, shouldn’t they show up in my sent messages?
Most likely it’s an e-mail worm of the “spambot” variety. The worm is probably not on your system (although you should run a scan or two just to make sure). The worm is probably on someone else’s system. You’ll never find out whose. It could be anywhere in the world.
There are a lot of spambot worms out there that work surreptitiously on an infected PC, and just rummage through a person’s address book for FROM and TO addresses. In this case, it found your address to insert into the FROM field, and a bunch of other random addresses in the address list to insert into the TO field.
If TO field recipient’s address is invalid, then the mail server at the recipient’s domain sends back a non-delivery report to the sender. The sender, in this case, is you, since your name is in the FROM field.
You can’t really do much to stop this sort of thing if it’s someone ELSE’S infected machine (or a deliberately set-up spambot machine) that is doing it. The only thing you can do is delete the messages, or get a good spam filtering program. Although, I’m not sure what to recommend that would hook into a web mail account like Hotmail. I’m mostly familiar with POP3 and Exchange spam filters.
Good luck.
Same thing happened to me some time ago. EBay was the "questionable website" I believe.
You are being “spoofed.” Changing your password will NOT help.
Spoofing is a hacker practice of making one computer/user appear as if it is someone else. My hotmail account has been spoofed twice - both times for porn. The first time was “normal” porn. The second time was kiddie porn. I received many threatening messages when spoofed the second time around.
The first time I was spoofed, I looked at my message headers and saw a consistent source IP. I was able to traceroute the messages and whois the spoofer. I got the contact information for a guy in England and sent a firm email insisting he stop spoofing me. The next day he sent an apologetic email claiming it was an accident and the spoofing ended.
The second time I was spoofed, they were very sophisticated. I tried to track them down, but they were originating out of about a dozen different proxies and hopping through countless servers. Because it was kiddie porn, I turned over all the information I had to the FBI. The spoofing stopped on it’s own after about a two days.
Newer spoofers will typically only spoof you for a short period, then they move on to someone else. The problem should fix itself. But it *is* annoying.
Oh, and by the way, changing your password to your Hotmail account won’t have any effect on a spambot or worm. They are not aware of it and don’t even use it.
Yes, unless they cleared your sent messages, but I doubt they would do that to send spam or virii. As I said, don't be overly concerned. I see this happen all the time at work. People will call our department saying they go a bounce message from someone they don't even know saying a virus was blocked, and the people are freaking about whether they have a virus and the fact they didn't know the other person. A search of the maillog and showing them it isn't in their sent messages is what it takes to ease their minds.
LOL Sometimes even then they still don't believe it.
Är du inloggad?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.