some one using my email address

irene939

Hiya, someome is sending me and everyone on my address book emails with my own email address. The emails are for things like viagra. Can anyone tell me how to bolck/stop them.

jayme1

changing your password should stop them.

Bogtrotter

I would also run a complete system scan with your antivirus program and also download and scan system with malwarebytes just to be on the safe side.

irene939

Thank You.
I was worried in case they were able to track me buying stuff online etc. How would they have got in in the first place?

irene939

I ran malwarebytes last night and last week. It didn't show anything.

George_Michael

Are you on AOL by any chance?

pledgeX

What anti-virus do you use? Have you updated it and run a complete scan. Could also try a spy-ware program like Spybot Search and Destroy, although I'd imagine malwarebytes would have picked it up. Did you update that before running it.

Also, what email client do you use? Is it outlook or online based like gmail/hotmail.

If it's online, change your password as suggested. If it's microsft outlook there are various spam filters you can get. I have never needed one but my parents use spamfighter which seems to be ok for them.

irene939

I use yahoo and have changed password and created a photo sighn in seal.I have been using Microsoft security essentials but it has been giving an error code lately. theres an hp assistant that pops up now and again. and I run malwarebytes every now and then and it is updated everytime I use it. I am a bit of a technidinosaur I am afraid.

bargainsearcher

I am having the exact same problem. Everyone in my address book is receiving emails from my email address, usually viagra or !!!!!! sites. I ran malwarebytes last time and although it didn't detect anything no emails were sent for about 6 weeks, then yesterday it happened again. I have run malware again but it is not detecting anything. In answer to your question George Michael I am with AOL, they have been of little help. Is this a common problem with AOL and do you have any ideas how to get rid of this problem?

macman

Same advice, change your email password to something much more secure and less easily hacked.

esuhl

When sending email, you can specify any email address you like in the "from" or "reply to" fields. Certain email clients or web interfaces won't allow you to edit those fields, and a few mail servers won't forward email if the email account being used doesn't correspond to the "from" and/or "reply to" addresses specified, but generally you can type anything you want in those fields. There are legitimate uses for doing this.

So, I would guess that someone is simply using your email address. If you look at the headers of the email address, you should be able to see the mail server that was used to send the message - if it's not the mail server you use, then your account probably hasn't been cracked.

Alternatively, someone may have cracked your account details (in which case changing your password should help), or you may have installed malware on your PC which is either using your PC to send email or has captured your account details and has passed them on to a third party (although it sounds like this isn't the case as you have scanned for malware).