weird emails that I've never had before

grownupgirly

hi

wondering if anyone could help me.

I have had my Hotmail.com email account for a very long time, at least 6 or 7 years and never had huge problems with spam etc. Just today and yesterday I started receiving LOADS of weird emails, saying 'return to sender: native american woman age 48' and other such worrying stuff. Loads saying 'postmaster delivery failure: serching (sic) for 48 year old woman' or something like that. I dont like it at all and dont know what I have done to get that.

I have been deleting them and the most recent ones I have started clicking on 'report as phishing' even though I know its not phishing. It seems someone has decided to use my email address for something elicit and I dont like it! Could anyone give any advice? Do I have a hacker?!!!! I have run my avg and also today downloaded a free spyware search thingy from microsoft. I ran it and it said my laptop was ok!

How do I deal with this apart from setting up a brand new email address?

Thanks

Grownupgirly

grownupgirly

PS I am 37 by the way and not into all that kinda stuff that these emails are insinuating!!!! Havent opened any of them!

RichOneday_2

Ignore them! You're bound to get spam from random email address generators sooner or later.

PS What were they insuniating?

foofi22

Sounds more like your computer is possibly being used as a 'bot'. Some malicious software is using your computer to send spam - when the address it sends to is invalid it comes back to the address it was sent from - you! Hence the 'return to sender...' message.
Try an online virus scanner (I recommend http://www.eset.com/onlinescan/) Also try Spybot search and destroy, Adaware (http://lavasoft.com/products/ad_aware_free.php) and A-squared (http://www.emsisoft.com/en/software/free/) is an excellent program for finding gremlins!

fitshase

Also change your hotmail password.

Garetha

Once your email address has been 'released' it will continue to get spam
Change your email address - and use Google mail
mail.google.com
Google has a very efficient spam filter

If you set up two google email accounts - one for personal and another for everything else then your personal one may be less likely to 'escape'!

Belnahua

I wouldn't worry too much about what foofi22 said, it's not that likely. Especially if you use a web client and not a local client like Outlook.

I get thousands of these emails every day; my spam filter captures most of them.

Some spammer sends out emails and puts your return address as the sender, not their's. So you get all the rejects.

Same as when you receive spam, there's some poor sod whose email address they've used, and is no doubt also receiving failed delivery emails themselves!

All it takes is for one database to be compromised (Cotton Traders etc), or to write to someone who doesn't take any precautions, or even a friend who has entered you into a mailing list! The worst culprit, is those damn chain emails - you know the ones, pass this onto ten friends or you will get run over by a bus crap. Even if you do delete the rubbish, someone will bound to have forwarded it on with your email address in one of the CC's, as it's gone to several other people at the same time.

grownupgirly

Hi

Thanks for your responses!

I added the EMI-soft anti malware (A squared) and did a deep scan - it found 49 bugs! ... 18 were cookie related though.

I also chnanged my password with Hotmail.

We'll see what happens next! If its still annoying me, I will change over to GoogleMail.

Thanks again

Grownupgirly

superscaper

It's as Belnahua said, a spammer is simply using your email address as the return address. Nothing more. Also nothing you can do as it's nothing to do with either your computer or email account. You can change over to GoogleMail if the problem persists but there's nothing to stop it happening with that address either.

grownupgirly

hello again.

Thanks for responses. I now have a sparkly new account with GoogleMail as it was getting ridiculous with Hotmail! And managed to export and import contacts and everything! hurray!

thanks again

Grownupgirly

latecomer

grownupgirly wrote: »

Thanks for responses. I now have a sparkly new account with GoogleMail as it was getting ridiculous with Hotmail! And managed to export and import contacts and everything! hurray!

Dont forget to let all your contacts know you've changed emails!