One email address taken over by spammer- help

RachelD

One of my email adresses from my own domain has been taken over by a spammer and used to send bulk mail.

I know this because an American ISP sent me an email to tell me this and that it could be that someone had taken over my email address for that purpose. I think I know how it happened . I got an e which was from 'Lauren' who wanted to travel to the UK etc and 'Love and kisses , see my pic. I didn't click on anyhing except to open the e in the preview pane, there were no atachments. I deleted it and forgot it.

I use Windows 7, Windows live mail, my domain is hosted by One and One and only used for email. I ran an antivirus scan - Windows essential security and Malware bytes. Both came up clean.

Should I cancel my email address? It will be a pain as I use it for shopping, Ebay, Paypal etc

Will passwords or anything else confidental ( bank details) be known to he spammer? Should I get another AV pogramme? And how can I protect myself against a similar happening in future?


Thank you.

Rachel

davb

Firstly are you sure the email from the ISP is genuine?

If it's your domain, you should be able to login to your domain admin and reset the email account password to something else (preferably from another PC at the moment) - that will stop anyone else using it. It's also not always the email account that's the problem, quite ofter the servers can get compromised.

Malwarebytes would be worth running on your PC to check for any issues.

nzseries1

My understanding is that if a spammer has hold of your email address (any email address), as well as using it to send you spam, they can also send spam from that address very easily. They don't need to log in as you to do it. It's very easy to fake the "from:" field of an email address. A few years ago I had an email client and web server that let you just type in the from address, and it could be absolutely anything.

In fact, the spammers may have just made up an email address, and it just happens to be yours.

I think they regularly rotate the email addresses they use on a regular basis. That's what happened to me a while back, I got a flood of auto-replies and "please take me off your mailing list" requests from people that were responses to emails I'd never sent. But it passed soon enough.

I'd say the chances of any spammers having your password or login details would be very slim, and you shouldn't worry too much about it.

hubert_cumberdale

what was lauren like - i only ever get tatiana emailing me lol

rogerp

What I would recommend even if the mail from the ISP is not genuine is that you should change all your passwords which you think is same as your e-mail password or any other passwords which you might have stored in your inbox. Change your e-bay paypal, internet banking etc as these are more important. Change your social networking passwords as well.
Dont worry much about it. Some spyware do that. Try using some antivirus which is especially made for spyware and use that to clean your system. If that does not work, you would like to take it to a professional or backup all your important and personal data and format your system.
In the future do not open any zip file or even something which looks like a text file. Open files only from known people. Do not even click on links from sources which look malicious. Remember that you will never get a lottery from Microsoft, Google or BMW. And that no one out there in Nigeria or Sudan who needs your help would send you an e-mail. Be a bit careful, thats it. This is a good experience for you. I had got viruses and malwares 3 times in 2 months and then I started being careful and am safe since last 2 years. :T

RachelD

Thank you all for your replies. I appreciate the help.

I think, Delta 2 , you came closest to my experience. I didn't receive any spam myself just had it sent using one of my email addresses. Unfortunately I've deleted everything t do with it, so can't provide the info re headers etc.

The only consequence (so far) is that Paypal has limited what I can do , but I'll be able to sort that out.

How can I set the the automatic preview to block mail with images -Windows live Mail- Win 7.

ivavoucher

DeltaTwo wrote: »

This happened to one of my domains with 1&1 just over a week ago.

DeltaTwo wrote: »

The spammer was sending out mail using random names@my domain
ie 'Spoofing', pretending the mail was coming from my domain.

I instantly knew this because i had a 'catch-all' setup specifically to alert me to this
With a 'catch-all', you can decide what to do with any mail that arrives at your domain that doesn't have a specific mailbox or alias setup to receive it.
.

I would advise you not to use a catch all as this only helps the spammer or spoofer.

Most mail servers check that an email address is valid before accepting mail. with catchall enabled then anything@yourdomain would be a valid address and so the spoof mail gets delivered OK

Without catchall the spoofer needs to use/find a valid address and this is why they try dictionary attacks in search of an address that is valid.

Most servers have anti-dictionary software in place but this does not function if you are using a catchall.


SPF can help,
SPF
SPF will specify which machines are authorized to send email from your domain(s). This means that only mail sent through this server will appear as valid mail from your domain(s) when the SPF records are checked.


I use easyhosting.co.uk for all my hosting requirements and get very little spoofing problems.
http://www.freeindex.co.uk/profile(easyhosting)_204757.htm