I got spammed by...myself o.o

[Acuben]

I was just checking my old email which has massive spams everyday.
Many of them spam mail from my friend's email address, i'm assuming they are infected somehow, but...
as I was clearing spam folder, i did see something very unusual. I got email saying "Viagra 65% off!" from .....me o.O
what could have caused this? could it be that my computer is contaminated? or is the problem within the email itself?

... does this mean I've been sending people spam mails without knowing it?

[╔(σ_σ)╝]

Lemme guess you use hotmail ?

[Acuben]

nope, yahoo mail

[╔(σ_σ)╝]

I think once you open one of thoes emails you get infected automatically.

[AlephZero]

It is obvious that spammers already know your email address, otherwise they wouldn't be able to send you spam.

They often use fake addresses because they look more "real" than made-up ones.

Most likely your address got stolen from a mail server somewhere on the web. If your own computer has antivirus protection etc (and if it doesn't, it certainly should have!) then don't lose any sleep over this - you can't do anything about it.

[rootX]

Or could it be multiple personality disorder :surprised


I agree with AlephZero. I get Viagra emails from my own school email address all the times.. and I don't have multiple personality disorder :biggrin:

[Office_Shredder]

The address that you see isn't necessarily the address that the email was sent from. If they're going to fake the apparent sent from address to make the email more legitimate, why not make it look like your email address? People send themselves emails all the time to move files around and such, it's a pretty clever ploy to catch someone who isn't paying attention

[Acuben]

The address that you see isn't necessarily the address that the email was sent from. If they're going to fake the apparent sent from address to make the email more legitimate, why not make it look like your email address? People send themselves emails all the time to move files around and such, it's a pretty clever ploy to catch someone who isn't paying attention

o so if I get email from office_shredder@hotmail.com it isn't necessarily office_shredder@hotmail.com ?


Or could it be multiple personality disorder
eek =o


does this mean I will be sending spam mails to my friends without me knowing it? (maybe that could explain why my emails seems to get ignored ...)

[Andre]

Have you ever reacted on those verify yahoo account phising e-mails, in which you were supposed to give your password? if so, your account is probably hijacked. Change your password as soon as possible

And never ever give a password to anybody.

[Borek]

Just because you are listed as a sender doesn't mean email originated from your account. Faking sender's email address is very simple, as it is never checked by the mail software when the mail is exchanged between servers. It can be not possible to fake the senders address on the level of mail reader, but from what I know on the level of SMTP its a breeze.

Google for fake email sender.

In short: what you see doesn't mean anything.

Edit: from what I see spammers quite often put the same address for both sender and addressee.

[Jimmy Snyder]

That's how I ended up with a basement full of Rolex watches, a thirty-foot shlong grown two inches at at a time, more Canadian meds than a Canadian pharmacy and all paid for with that $20 million I got from some Nigerian princess.

[Borg]

Yes, it's really easy to fake the address. I occasionally send email from God @ Heaven.org to my friends just to mess with them. :wink:

I wouldn't worry too much unless a bunch of people in your address book start asking why you're sending Viagra emails to them.

[diazona]

Just because you are listed as a sender doesn't mean email originated from your account. Faking sender's email address is very simple, as it is never checked by the mail software when the mail is exchanged between servers. It can be not possible to fake the senders address on the level of mail reader, but from what I know on the level of SMTP its a breeze.

Google for fake email sender.

In short: what you see doesn't mean anything.

Edit: from what I see spammers quite often put the same address for both sender and addressee.
Mail clients don't have access to the SMTP envelope "From" address (which is the one that sometimes gets checked). All they can display is the "From" header, which is the one that's trivially easy to fake.

I'd say the same thing as Borg :wink: (note though that faking the "From" header, while technically easy, is generally illegal in the US)