Quizzes & Puzzles5 mins ago
Emails From Myself
15 Answers
Hi, I know this has been covered before (with answers from Buenchico and others) but i never quite got to the bottom of it.
I use a sky/yahoo email account. I know the account may have been compromised a few years ago in the yahoo breach and I will migrate from it eventually but I am doing this bit by bit as it takes time to notify all employers, banks, utility companies and other contacts.
Anyway, the problem is I occasionally get in my spam box emails that look as if they come from me- usually offering pharmacy or electrical items. I know spammers can guess email addresses and can spoof them so they appear to come from me, but these do seem to come from me. If I look at the headers it shows my email address; if I reply the reply goes to me; if I try to block it I'm told I can't block my own address.
Now it's probably not a big problem unless it's also sending them from me to other people in my address book, but I'd like to tackle it in case there is a bigger underlying problem.
So my questions are how does it happen and how should it be tackled? I already use Avast and Malwarebytes if these help. I have already changed my email passwords a few times recently.
I'd appreciate any suggestions. Thanks
I use a sky/yahoo email account. I know the account may have been compromised a few years ago in the yahoo breach and I will migrate from it eventually but I am doing this bit by bit as it takes time to notify all employers, banks, utility companies and other contacts.
Anyway, the problem is I occasionally get in my spam box emails that look as if they come from me- usually offering pharmacy or electrical items. I know spammers can guess email addresses and can spoof them so they appear to come from me, but these do seem to come from me. If I look at the headers it shows my email address; if I reply the reply goes to me; if I try to block it I'm told I can't block my own address.
Now it's probably not a big problem unless it's also sending them from me to other people in my address book, but I'd like to tackle it in case there is a bigger underlying problem.
So my questions are how does it happen and how should it be tackled? I already use Avast and Malwarebytes if these help. I have already changed my email passwords a few times recently.
I'd appreciate any suggestions. Thanks
Answers
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>I would imagine somebody has gained access to your email address book and is spamming everybody in it!
That may be the case but if so it must be an old copy of my address book as my other own email addresses are in that account's contacts list and they don't receive them.
If it is the case, presumably the only way to stop it is to close the account
That may be the case but if so it must be an old copy of my address book as my other own email addresses are in that account's contacts list and they don't receive them.
If it is the case, presumably the only way to stop it is to close the account
This may be worth a look FF. My son had this same problem some months back and managed to sort it, but I cannot get hold of him at the moment.
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It may be worth taking your email address out of your contacts list. I think that was one of the things my son did. He was in the habit of emailing stuff from his phone so as to have a copy or record on his desktop.
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I know that FF has gone to work now, but I would just say that it is unlikely that the email account has been hacked, as the password is usually changed to deny access to the true account holder. FF has changed the password so is in control of the account. I think my son went down the ip address and server route to stop the spam.
Thanks. Back now. Will try taking my own address from my address book. However it puzzles me that my other yahoo/sky/gmail email addresses are in there and they don't get the spam. Also my friends and family normally let each other know if we get such spam from each other. I also don't understand why the emails really do seem to be from me because when i click reply they come back to me.
I've dug a little deeper and tried a couple of things. I'll report back in a few days on whether they worked. I'm fairly optimistic.
As Togo said, I don't think it is a hack a such- I think it's just that i have one fairly convention johnsmith @sky.com type email address although the sender makes it look as if it comes from me to me, the raw message suggests they come from someone with a bitcoin or bingo related email address but they put something in the headers to give my email as the return address. So one thing I have tried is removing my own email address from the address book. There was also a mysterious contact with a very long sequence of digits @sky.com so I have also removed that. I've also put in some filters about bitcoin and bingo.
Will see how it goes
As Togo said, I don't think it is a hack a such- I think it's just that i have one fairly convention johnsmith @sky.com type email address although the sender makes it look as if it comes from me to me, the raw message suggests they come from someone with a bitcoin or bingo related email address but they put something in the headers to give my email as the return address. So one thing I have tried is removing my own email address from the address book. There was also a mysterious contact with a very long sequence of digits @sky.com so I have also removed that. I've also put in some filters about bitcoin and bingo.
Will see how it goes
I have a few blocked email senders from bitcoin spammers FF. I could copy and paste them here so that you can add them to your block list. I do not know how that would go down with ED though. Before pasting I would of course add brackets or suchlike so that no one could inadvertently or mistakenly access them with a click.
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