Odd emails!!

[TheBoatman]

Just recently I have been getting email responses from "my system administrator" saying things like "your message was undiliverable" or "your message was rejected by the recpient".
Now there's nothing wrong in that we all get that type of message when we've cocked up an address, my problem is I never sent any message to these people, they don't appear in my address book and most are sent when I was even using the 'puter.

Can anybody shead any light???? /forums/images/graemlins/confused.gif

 

[Kristal]

Yes, it sounds like a virus to me. It's exactly the symptom you get when a virus has used your address to send off random emails to other intended victims.

It doesn't even necessarily mean you have the virus on your machine, just that the virus is aware of your address and has configured it's outgoing emails (from wherever, whenever, anywhere on the planet) to appear as if from you.

Worth scanning your PC for viruses if you aren't already running software, but more than likely it's just twigged you as someoneto blame, and has got your address from any random website (could even be this one) or the address book of someone you once sent mail to. There's nothing virus writers like better than a good frame-up.

Hope this helps.

/<

 

[eyehavit]

Possibly a virus. Run a few checks on your own pc.

 

[Colin_S]

I get these on a daily basis, all from people I've never heard of. No virius' on my PC so they are being created on another PC that has my addy on it (unless Brendan says otherwise)

I ran Avast anti virus on my daughters PC the other day - it picked up 162 infected files - yikes.
Most were spyware / adaware progs.

How's the crown jewels BTW? /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

 

[BrendanS]

Yes. Most likely explanation, though there are others. You probably have an ISP provider who provides you with the facility to use an email address such as (this is just an example, not a real address) like peter@boatman.freeserve.co.uk

The peter is can be swapped for anything like brendan@boatman.freeserve.co.uk or 1234xyz@boatman.freeserve.co.uk, and it will still arrive in your email inbox.

What has probably happened is that spammers have got hold of the legitimate email address, and are spoofing variants of it to send spam messages (they haven't hacked into your account, they send the emails from their own or 'borrowed' email servers, while spoofing the sending address.

What you are receiving are bounced emails that have been rejected as incorrect, where spam filters are in place, or the mailbox is full etc, as the changed email address will still arrive in your inbox

If you look at the content of the emails you are receiving, is your email address different to what you normally use, and is the content spam like? are the messages from YOUR sys admin or a variety of others? If it is your admin, and email addresses are consistent with the one you normally use, then you have a different problem

 

[Colin_S]

Most of the one's I get bounced have an attachment with a virus. They all get held in my bulk mail inbox that I can only access online via a website rather than OE.

Just looked and got 2 today. Scanned an attachment - "Virus "W32.Netsky.P@mm" found.
The file attached to this message was infected with a virus that we were unable to clean. You can not download this attachment. "

 

[TheBoatman]

I run the latest version of Norton anti virus, all in coming and out going emails are scanned and anyone can see from my email address that my server is Telewest Broadband(Blueyonder)which has anti spam in place as well. I can't answer the questions about the addresses because I have deleted the messages from my system.
What got me thinking was I caught the end of BBC Watchdog tonight and they said in the next prog they were going to tell everyone about the latest email scam but didn't say any more (thanks bbc) only that it was very sophisticated.

 

[BrendanS]

I shouldn't worry about it too much. The bouncing emails in question are almost certainly not coming from your computer. They are almost certainly not part of any sophisticated spam.

I don't suspect that the bouncing emails are due to a trojan infected computer sending virus emails, as it would be highly likely you would be getting return emails telling you the emails had not been delivered as they contained a virus (quite common for ISP's to flag this), rather than undeliverable messages which is why I suspect spammers as most likely.

If you receive any more, keep a few of them, and I can pm you my email so you can forward them to me, and I'll take a look at them.


PS - if it's going to be on Watchdog, I'm prepared to stake money it's not the lastest scam, but something we've been aware of for ages! <g>

 

[Kristal]

Am on nightshift at the BBC at the moment. I'll see if I can have a poke into their scripts for next week...

 

[TigaWave]

I strongly suspect these are e-mails containing a virus.
Do you have avg anti virus (updated)?
AVG has recently grabbed several e-mails and put them in the virus vault as containing a virus with titles/subjesct like
From: Mail Administrator/The Post Office/support@symantic/email@address.com
Subjects: error in document/mail server/returned mail;see transcript/delivery reports about your e-mails.
(My father got duped by the returned mail one and it was a virus, if you open the mail to look at the transcript..then bingo) Many that look like a virus are hoaxes, but these that look kind of genuine you should be careful with.
I get at least one virus mail a day as my e-mail is the same as the published web address, as well as the spam.
The best virus and adware killers I've found so far are Ad-Aware and AVG for what its worth.
Neil

 

[snowleopard]

the 'message undelivered' etc. emails are a trick to get you to open the message to find out what it's about. they are carriers of viruses or trojans, the giveaway being that they usually have attachments of 20k+.

they seem to be the only things that sneak through my spam blocker though they usually get shunted into the junk mail folder.

if you don't recognise the addressee and there is an attachment, delete it without opening.

 

[Riggy]

Brendan is totally correct in his assessment......a remote possibility your computer is Trojan-infected...but more likely a third-party spammer bouncing emails.
My business sends out around 2000 emails a month to the client database and we get many hundreds of replies....a percentage of them are returned marked 'message rejected or undeliverable' etc etc...
Whether or not the emails sent are genuine or have been sent by spammers hijacking your email adress, I find this is due to three main reasons.
1. Recipients inbox is full
2. Recipients have changed their email adress
3. EMail adress is incorrect (spammers invent email adresses but still use your adress as a medium for sending out)
Also agree with TigaWave...after having tried numerous free Trojan/Virus software programmes....Ad-Aware has been the best so far (but needs to be used daily (ish) as most other "free" software's leave some sort of pop-ups or advertising still running in the background.
Norton I find is useless for certain types of Trojan or Worm and only use it for Fire-walling.