[RightOnTheLeftCoast]

"Not sure about bot networks. But something strange is happening on an old e-mail account of mine. The e-mail in the in-box shows my old e-mail address as the source of the e-mail. In other words, I log in to my old xyz123@provider.com account, and there are e-mails in there from xyz123@provider.com that I know I didn’t send. Is there a way to determine whether or not that account has been hi-jacked?"

Common viral behavior. It simply means that someone with whom you've corresponded in the past and who has your email address in their address-book has been infected. Their machine is churning out spam emails "from" people in their address book. This cloaks the origin of the spam.

[IYAS9YAS]

Common viral behavior. It simply means that someone with whom you've corresponded in the past and who has your email address in their address-book has been infected. Their machine is churning out spam emails "from" people in their address book. This cloaks the origin of the spam.

Thanks. Is there a way to determine the actual origin of these spam mails without turning my account in as the spamming e-mail account (report as junk, etc...)? Also, is there anything I can look at on my machine to determine whether or not it's been corrupted?

I had a trojan downloader try to install stuff on my computer last week, but managed to successfully ward it off. Zone Alarm was no help here. I clicked on a link in a Jeep forum that was supposedly to a parts supplier. Things just started down-loading.

Zone Alarm ignored it, I had to stop everything. Ran spy-bot search and destroy, zone alarm anti-virus/anti-spyware and will run ad-aware tonight. Spy-Bot Search and Destroy found the trojan and dealt with it. I'm just surprised Zone Alarm didn't spike it.

Also, is it better to run these anti-malware programs in "Safe Mode"? If so, why?