Keep getting emails from my email acount

[230K]

Stevesy

Your tip for adding our address to spam on the webmail account seems to have worked, havent had any since i added it to spam.
(I didnt even know we had a web account for that address )

Thanks for that

230K

 

[carnut]

I may be losing the answer here but its not the fact that people can find my account address & send spam to my account thats my concern, its that ISPs allow people to use my account address and name to send spam to other people without having my password to authorise the send account address.

In order for Outlook to show the "from" address surely the ISP has to be certain that the account with Password has actually sent that email? If not then any email being used to accept a contract, make an agreement, or order goods is worthless.

 

[ringway]

It's more insidious than that - the "Canadian Pharmacy" is a good example. When you open the email you see an image of the drugs on sale.
This image is downloaded from the spammers' servers each image has a unique ID associated with the email so to display the image sent to [email protected] the email needs to download image A03DEF012A.jpg. This is a "web-bug".

You see the image on your screen and delete the email as junk.
On the spammers' email servers A03DEF012A.jpg has been downloaded 1 time.
All that needs to happen is the spammers check against their database which email downloads A03DEF012A.jpg and that email address is "live" and worth more to sell on.

My AOL email address was hi-jacked some time ago and I sent around 600 emails to people offering mortgages!!
I have nothing to do with mortgages but people contacted me to ask to be removed from my e-marketing list.

I told AOL about it and they were as helpful as they usually are -ie: THEY DID SOD ALL ABOUT IT.....!
That is why my AOL address is all-but finished with now. They are dire

 

[masqueraid]

If not then any email being used to accept a contract, make an agreement, or order goods is worthless.

Certainly worthless as proof yes.

I'm afraid this is part of the reason that spam is so prolific, you can register your computer's ID against your email address so that there is some means of verifying where the mail originated but that relies on your recipient also using the same system (and the spammer not knowing what your computer's ID is).

It is a fundamental flaw in the mail system which uses a protocol called Simple Mail Transfer which makes email very simple to use but equally easy to abuse.

I'm sure most of the IT literate members here could quite easily send you an email that purports to come from your own email address.

 

[carnut]

Thanks for the info....oh s**t this can only get worse

ignore the signiture and message below under these circumstances

 

[jimti]

My Freeserve mail box is full now, I stopped using it after getting loads of mail from postmasters saying the recipient address was wrong where I had never sent anything in the first place, I spoke to freeserve (Wanado/Orange) in India and they couldn't help me..No problem, I just got a web based mail address and let them fill up their servers space with my spam.
I am moving away from them at the end of my contract anyway, so for me the problem will end then for a bit anyway

 

[eGuru]

My AOL email address was hi-jacked some time ago and I sent around 600 emails to people offering mortgages!!
I have nothing to do with mortgages but people contacted me to ask to be removed from my e-marketing list.

I told AOL about it and they were as helpful as they usually are -ie: THEY DID SOD ALL ABOUT IT.....!
That is why my AOL address is all-but finished with now. They are dire

Someone lowlife actually set up an email account in my name with googlemail.
I reported this to google and on their advice to the local police. Nobody could be bothered to even look into the matter. Finally took care of things myself and informed google and the police of what I had done. Did not hear a word from either organisation.

 

[stevesey]

My Freeserve mail box is full now, I stopped using it after getting loads of mail from postmasters saying the recipient address was wrong where I had never sent anything in the first place...

Most likely to be someone else with you in their address book has got a virus (or a spammer) is sending the messages out and using your address as the from address - hence the reject message comes back to you. In the past I have written back to the organisations bouncing the messages (after checking they are legit) pointing out that the from address is obviously spoofed and they should detect this before sending bounced messages, as all they are doing is clogging up the internet with more spam (did get one message back saying they'd updated their filtering rules).

My AOL email address was hi-jacked some time ago and I sent around 600 emails to people offering mortgages!!
I have nothing to do with mortgages but people contacted me to ask to be removed from my e-marketing list.

I told AOL about it and they were as helpful as they usually are -ie: THEY DID SOD ALL ABOUT IT.....!

No much they can do - the e-mails probably never went anywhere near their servers. Sadly all you can do in this situation is get a new e-mail address. It's a bit like someone cloning you reg plates and running up camera/parking tickets all over the country - it's probably easier to change your plates than wait for the police to pick up the offender.

I may be losing the answer here but its not the fact that people can find my account address & send spam to my account thats my concern, its that ISPs allow people to use my account address and name to send spam to other people without having my password to authorise the send account address.

In order for Outlook to show the "from" address surely the ISP has to be certain that the account with Password has actually sent that email? If not then any email being used to accept a contract, make an agreement, or order goods is worthless.

The from address can be easily spoofed - you can put what you like in the "e-mail address" box when setting up your e-mail account in your e-mail program. Before we had decent remote e-mail access at work I used to spoof my work account all the time when working from home (also have used for the odd practical joke - once gave a workmate a shock by making it look like he'd sent a derogatory comment to a customer by accident, by spoofing the customers reply - (but just one letter different))

You ISP authenicates you by the fact you have connected to them, via a dedicated line and/or with a username/password, once you have they will let you use any from address you like (including someone else's).

In reality this is very little different to the postal system - the post office allow you to send anything you like, the senders address or address on the letterhead within is not checked and you could easily receive a spoofed letter from someone claiming to be your Bank asking for personal details with a letterhead and reply envelope that is a PO Box used by criminals. So in terms of contacts, purchases etc the same abuses exist in both post and e-mail - which is why some organisations will only send information to and e-mail address you have previously registered with them and not by "reply").

Hope this helps.