Yikes! I just received an unusual piece of spam sent both to & from my email address. Is this the work of a virus?

Yikes! I just received an unusual piece of spam sent both to & from my email address. Is this the work of a virus?

It purported to be from a Canadian pharmacy, probably for a Viagra-like product. The subject line was somewhat obscene. Since this communication was to my email address, from my email address, does that mean that my computer has been taken over by a virus?

Did somebody get access to my address book? The only time I've seen an email to and from the same address is when someone is sending an email to a group of people and their addresses and identities are hidden. Yikes!

What should I do? I have McAfee through AOL with the firewall disabled (so I can sign on! ) and Spybot Search & Destroy.

Asked by CALGal 33 months ago Similar questions: Yikes received unusual piece spam email address work virus Computers > Internet.

Similar questions: Yikes received unusual piece spam email address work virus.

So did Email Battles. Curious, we pointed our hot new diagnostic toy, Mail Server Profiler, at Yahoo’s mail servers, to see if we could find any hints. First, Mail Server Profiler mapped and analyzed the Yahoo Mail setup.

It found 16 host IP addresses behind four mail server MX records, and identified half of them as closed, ie, not accepting any email messages. Sources: http://www.emailbattles.com/2006/04/12/email_aaddhghiad_ih/ .

Here's Why Reader Denise Brown writes: I just read your article "Follow the Spam. " There was a sentence in there regarding unsuspecting users' email accounts being used to send spam. About two weeks ago, I received spam from what appeared to be my own email account.

The address was the same as my email account, and I thought it was weird, but just used the Yahoo! Delete Spam button. Should I be concerned about my email account?

If so, what should I do? I like my email address, have used it for years, and don't particularly want to change it, but will if I have to. This is an important point that I probably should have clarified at the time.

Put simply: What you see in the "From" field on an email has little bearing on where it was actually sent from. Why? It's one of the easiest things to forge in the book.

In fact, so-called address spoofing is such a common trick that it's become a major tool in phishing scams. The hope is that a suspicious recipient will just look at the sender, see it says "[email protected]" or "service@paypal. Com," and assume the message is legitimate.

Of course, it's as phony as a three-dollar bill, and if you click on the links in that message, you'll be whisked off to a scam website. With general "Viagra"-style spam, one common trick is to simply forge the email of the recipient as the sender as well, which is what you're seeing. So [email protected] receives email sent from you@yahoo.

Com, or so it seems. Again, the idea is that you might trick a few people into thinking they actually emailed themselves. Of course, it's all a fiction.

That doesn't mean that spam never comes from the address in the From field or that legitimate email accounts can't be hijacked for evil ends. They can. But compared to spoofing, both are fairly rare: It makes much more sense for a spammer to hide his tracks as much as possible to prolong the amount of time before he gets caught and that account or computer becomes defunct.

It should go without saying that you should protect yourself thoroughly with antivirus and anti-spyware applications so that doesn't happen to you. Sources: http://tech. Yahoo.com/blogs/null/58666 .

1 CALGal, this has happened to me, too! I hope you get an answer to your question ..

CALGal, this has happened to me, too! I hope you get an answer to your question . ..

2 I don't think you can really do anything about it. My email was used in the same manner, with the actual emails coming from all over the world. To track down the culprit you would have to have lots of money and be very quick.

They don't have to get into your computer to get your address. It is scattered all over the internet on mailings and these monster emails that ask for peope to sign a petitionl, etc. I notified my friends to look out for them and waited for them to get tired of using your address. The to and from is the usual mailing with the sender as one of the addresses in the blind carbon copy.

I don't think you can really do anything about it. My email was used in the same manner, with the actual emails coming from all over the world. To track down the culprit you would have to have lots of money and be very quick.

They don't have to get into your computer to get your address. It is scattered all over the internet on mailings and these monster emails that ask for peope to sign a petitionl, etc. I notified my friends to look out for them and waited for them to get tired of using your address. The to and from is the usual mailing with the sender as one of the addresses in the blind carbon copy.

3 .... waited for them to get tired of using MY address...... sorry .

.... waited for them to get tired of using MY address...... sorry.

I am receiving spam emails to my personal email account, from my boyfriend's email address, however.......

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.