Email Spam

A

Actuary

2[H]4U
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Feb 8, 2005
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Apparently, my gmail account is sending out spam - a friend alerted me to getting weird messages from me and, checking my gmail spam folder, I have a handful of Delivery Failure notifications. Message consists only of a weird link.

My Father's email appears to be doing the same thing and, unfortunately, I logged onto my email on his machine a few days ago, which it appears is when mine started. Thoughts/how to proceed?

Just changed my gmail password. Ran Malwarebytes, spybot, MSE on his machine and took a look at the hijack this log, nothing suspicious.
 
Are any computers with e-mail clients, or any smart phones...setup on it? Or do you check it from just this computer, via a browser?
 
I have Thunderbird setup on my machine (different from my father's), and I access it with my phone.
 
Recent activity report shows a browser in Serbia. Cool beans. Anything I should do other than a new password and obligatory scans on my machine?

While we're on the subject, anything that I can use to let me know when I have new email in my gmail account (short of always leaving a browser open)? That's pretty much the only reason I use Thunderbird (the notification).
 
Last edited:
Spammers often put someone else's addy in the "from" field so that the delivery failure notices go to another person.

Check the headers for IPs to verify the origin and have your friend do the same.

What may have happened is that your friend's email was compromised, and the addys in his/her address book harvested. Does he/she use Outlook by any chance? I've heard it's especially vulnerable.

http://www.slipstick.com/outlook/antivirus.asp

Because of Outlook's easy-to-use programming model, viruses can propagate themselves by reading the Outlook address books and sending new virus-infected messages to everyone found there. However, virus developers seem to be aware of the new security provisions in Outlook, because the latest viruses have included their own SMTP engine to send messages, thus avoiding Outlook's security prompts.
Click to expand...

I recently received spam from a friend who lives in France. Headers confirmed that the emails were originating from China.
 
Multiple people now, actually, have let me know they've received a spam email from me. The recent activity report showing a logon in Serbia makes me believe my email was compromised in some way, which concerns me because I did check the machine I believe was the cause (my Father's, from earlier) and found nothing.

I know they weren't using Outlook.
 
I just got over 200 mail delivery failure notifications last night, and it looks like the mail is trying to go to .ru email addresses.
 
My father had this happen (his email password really sucked). A good password change has fixed the problem.

I think that it's just someone with a brute force 'cracker' getting lucky and logging into the account.
 
Actuary said:
While we're on the subject, anything that I can use to let me know when I have new email in my gmail account (short of always leaving a browser open)? That's pretty much the only reason I use Thunderbird (the notification).
Click to expand...

GMail supports POP and IMAP. Pretty much any email-checking app can work with it.
 
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