My computer is sending out emails!

ceewash

I have an apple macbook air and broadband from aol. The computer is generating lots of emails and sending them somewhere and then they are being returned to me. Everytime I open my email box I have several returned emails, none of which I sent. They all appear in my sent box as if I have sent them. None of them make much sense, some are just a series of symbols. Is it a virus of some kind?

dehaani

They are quite unlikely to have originated from your computer.

See here.

Tom_Jones

ceewash wrote: »

I have an apple macbook air and broadband from aol. The computer is generating lots of emails and sending them somewhere and then they are being returned to me. Everytime I open my email box I have several returned emails, none of which I sent. They all appear in my sent box as if I have sent them. None of them make much sense, some are just a series of symbols. Is it a virus of some kind?

You hae a virus, update your A and scan your whole system, also scan your system for spyware as well.

anguilla

ceewash wrote: »

I have an apple macbook air and broadband from aol. The computer is generating lots of emails and sending them somewhere and then they are being returned to me. Everytime I open my email box I have several returned emails, none of which I sent. They all appear in my sent box as if I have sent them. None of them make much sense, some are just a series of symbols. Is it a virus of some kind?

A mac is a lot more unlikely to have malware than a PC (although it is not immune). Sounds very much like your email address is being used to send spam - this is completely different from having a virus. I had this once and was receiving bounceback messages at the rate of 1.5/sec (eventually stopped with somewhere close to 6,000 returned messages!) - best solution is to change your email address!

cyberbob

As anguilla said its unlikely to be a virus or Spyware. Go to your email account online and change the password see if this has any effect

davb

Sounds unusual for a Mac - is this by any chance a webmail account such as Hotmail. If it is, it's more likely your account has been hacked, so as cyberbob says, change your password asap.
The other thing is that your email address could have been spoofed (as anguilla describes) - someone sending out mail pretending to be you - and there is not much you can do about that. The only way to check would be to analyse the headers of one of the mails.

JustPassingBy

ceewash wrote: »

I have an apple macbook air and broadband from aol. The computer is generating lots of emails and sending them somewhere and then they are being returned to me. Everytime I open my email box I have several returned emails, none of which I sent. They all appear in my sent box as if I have sent them. None of them make much sense, some are just a series of symbols. Is it a virus of some kind?

A computer does as it is instructed. The question is whether you have issued the instructions (knowingly or not) or someone else has. Without a sight of the email headers it may be impossible to diagnose.

patman99

If they are appearing in th op's 'sent' box, then they must have originated from his/her computer. Spoofed email addresses would generate undelivered mail notifications, but not appear in the sent mail folder.

I will presume that the op is not stupid-enough to be using a computer without antivirus software, so will suggest that he/she checks to make sure that it is up to date. Also seek-out some anti-malware programs and use them.

dehaani

I suggest that one of your contacts has a virus or trojan.

The Mac is really unlikely to fall victim to the usual virii that harvest email addresses and/or generate spam emails.

It is much more likely that someone who has your email address stored in their contacts is infected with a trojan. The trojan uses email addresses found on the host's computer as spoof sender's addresses on the spam it sends. When it sends an email to a non-existent recipient, the server responsible for delivering the message bounces a response back to you in the mistaken belief that the email originated from you.

There are some trojans and rootkits that infect Macs, so it's worth checking your machine but only as a precaution. I really don't think it's likely that you're infected.

ceewash

I have now got a new email address and I am in the process of changing my password on the old one. I hope this will sort it out. Will let you know. Thanks.

bani

Hi
I also had this problem before Christmas. I use the AOL webmail (no AOL components on my PC). One morning I found 15-20 returned emails in my inbox. Checked my sent log and found that my id had sent around 6 emails, each with 8 addresses from my address book with the message to visit some website I have never heard of. I had not sent these messages, and I have this sites recommended free AV and anti-malware installed and updated. Clearly someone had accessed my webmail account. AOL were very off hand when I contacted them. It was clearly all my fault!
Two days later the same happened again, but the emails' subject lines and contents were all in either Japanese or Chines pictograms. AOL again denied any responsibility. Changed AOL mail password again, ran AV etc, and also set up googlemail account and got IMAC from AOL!
Currently in process of moving away from AOL, shame in some ways because I got used to their system, but don't like the security or heldesk now!