Email From My Own Address

[taichiperson]

Does anyone know how to get rid of emails that seem to come from your own email address? It's a pain in the neck to keep getting invitations seemingly from young women desperate for sex (I'm female and heterosexual if that has any bearing). I can't block them - any ideas? Please note I'm not dim enough ever to click on the links in the emails.

[Togo]

Click on the name of the person who is sending these emails (which should appear as you) and see if the actual email address is yours or a random one

If it is a random one but the name that you see is your own, your account has not been hacked, but someone has obtained your address and name. Do the following

1.Go to the outlook website
2.Tick the box next to the scam email
3.Click on the down arrow next to 'Junk'
4.Click 'phishing scam'
If it is your own address and name, then you have a major problem and your account may of been hacked.

[taichiperson]

It appears as if it's coming from my address, there is no other address there. I have friends who have the same issue (we are facebook friends and don't have each others' email addresses). I don't appear to be sending the same emails out to anyone else. Would changing my password help?

[Buenchico]

How do you receive your emails?

If it's via a web-based system there's little that you can do other than to keep clicking on the button for 'Mark as Spam' (or similar), which will hopefully help your email provider's system filter out such emails in future.

If you receive your mail through an email client (such as Outlook Express, Outlook, Windows Live Mail, Windows 10 Mail or Thunderbird) you can use the filtering options built into that client to send the spam emails directly to your 'Junk' folder or you can use MailWasher to prevent them being forwarded to your computer (or mobile device) from your email provider's server:
http://www.mailwasher.net/

If you find yourself swamped with spam though, get yourself a new email address here:
http://www.gmx.co.uk/
Use the 'Mail Collector' facility to have mail sent to your old address forwarded to a separate folder at your new account (so that you won't lose any genuine mail). Gradually educate your legitimate contacts about your new address. Once they've all started to use it, simply disable the 'Mail Collector' and abandon your old account.

[Buenchico]

The mail which you're receiving has (prior to arriving with you) never been anywhere near to your computer, nor to the sending facility of your email account. (i.e. your account has NOT been hacked and changing your password will make NO difference whatsoever).

It's extremely easy to forge the 'from' and 'return' addresses in emails. Spammers know that using legitimate addresses in those fields gives them a better chance of evading spam-filtering software. So that's why they put your own address there.

[taichiperson]

Thanks Beunchico, nothing else odd has happened with that address so I didn't think I'd been hacked. I'm not sure what you mean about how I get the emails - I just type in hotmail.com and log in from there. I don't use Outlook express. I already use the junk email folder and filter out anything unwanted but was puzzled as to how to block these ones - would I disappear in a puff of smoke - like a snake eating its own tail?? Usually all the junk I get is not strictly speaking Junk, just newsletters etc I don't want to keep. I rarely get anything I've not already signed up for.

[Togo]

Set your junk filter to "Exclusive" and make sure your own address is not in your People and Safe Sender lists. That should help. Also, be sure to click Junk. when you get a message. Microsoft's servers do accumulate the reports and Microsoft updates the junk filters each month based on the reports.

[Buenchico]

>>> I just type in hotmail.com and log in from there

That means that you're using a web-based service. The 'proper' way to send and receive email (i.e. the way it was designed for and the way that nearly all businesses still use) is to access it via a specific programme for the task (such as Outlook Express).

'Webmail' (accessed through a web browser, and what you're using) came later and, while it offers certain advantages, it's not as easy to take full control of your mail that way. So, for example, you lose much of the ability to filter out spam.

I wouldn't touch Hotmail/Outlook with an infinite number of the proverbial bargepoles. It ranks alongside Yahoo as the worst email service that I know of. So I've no knowledge of whether this suggestion, from over 5 years ago, will still work but it might be worth a try:
http://www.emailquestions.com/threads/how-to-filter-unwanted-spam-and-junk-email-in-hotmail.2615/

Some general advice though:

1. Never create an email account with a 'guessable' address. Spammers send out messages to '[email protected]', '[email protected], '[email protected]', etc in the knowledge that at least some of them will get through to real people. However if Jane Smith uses '[email protected]' or '[email protected]' as her address, it's far less likely that randomly-targeted spam will find its way into her inbox ;

2. Keep one email address private, with just your close friends and relatives knowing it. Then use different email addresses for other purposes, such as ordering things on Amazon or signing-up on The Answerbank. Then if (say) The Answerbank's membership database was to be hacked by spammers, only a 'throwaway' address would become known to them, with your 'personal' address remaining private.