Someone is using my email address

[peachybabe]

Can someone advise me what to do please. It appears that someone has got hold of my email address and is using it to send out rubbish emails to everyone. I have internet security installed and have "run scans" as my more IT literate friends have advised, but to no avail. Can anyone tell me what I can do to stop this? Many thanks.

[society]

Change your password immediately. Go on, now...

[squarebear]

Do these messages appear in your sent items?

[Mosaic]

Empty your deleted items box and your sent mail box, run another Av scan using your anti virus software, and as recommended above change your password. It sounds like an email virus rather than someone physically using your account. Sometimes the only way to get rid is to close the account and make a new one.

[peachybabe]

Squarebear. I do sometime get them come through, but delete without even opening them. Seems friends are getting them more than I am!

All - Many thanks. Will try all suggestions!

[squarebear]

But are they in your sent items rather than your inbox?

[peachybabe]

Squarebear - nothing in my sent box.

[squarebear]

Thanks for the quick reponse!

That means you do not have a virus and someone is using your email address rather than your email itself. You can do nothing about it apart from change address and be careful where on the net you post it.

Anyone can make an email appear as though it is from any else at all.

[LoftyLottie]

This has happened to me and lots of others I know. I just ignore them now and never open them.

My friend who is a very religious man and on the Church committee found out that a viagra email had been sent to his vicar, supposedly from him. Fortunately, they had a laugh about it.

[MarkRae]

Following on from SB's post, this is very common. You will have posted your email address somewhere recently, and it will have been "harvested" by spiders and web crawlers which look for these things. A known live email address is like gold-dust to spammers, because emails which look like they've come from live email accounts are much less likely to get caught up in spam filters...

[LoftyLottie]

Fortunately I only get them on an email address I rarely use that has no links with anything important!!

[MarkRae]

In which case, just cancel that email account...