Spammer using my email address

PinkPeach

Hi, not sure if anyone can advise me on this. I've just received an email sent to my account from my own email address, it contained an add for an online pharmacy. I stupidly opened it and am concerned now that I've triggered a virus.

I have no idea how to stop this and from having a quick look online the people offering advice seem to be very sarcastic and unhelpful. I just wondered if I ought to cease using this email account full stop now that this has happened? I've got basic knowledge of computers so any simple explanations very welcome. Thanks in advance.

in_the_Cotswolds

I had this happen to me once on my Hotmail account. I was actually at a friends house when the email from my account came through.

This is what I did, ran a virus scan a couple of times and then changed my password then changed it again a couple of days later. Luckily I don't use Hotmail anymore.

More tech minded people may be able to give more in depth advice.

johnmc

1 change your password
2 these things happen! It's dead easy to spoof an email.
3 run a full AV scan.
4 run ccleaner
5 change your password again.

If it happens again, scrap the account, open a new one and let everyone on your contacts list know to ignore everything from your old account.

aerostar

Spammers often use the send to address as the return/from address eg sent to me from me, just another trick to get you to read it !

Pikeyp

Another trick is to 'harvest' email addresses from all sorts of forums on the web , thousands of them , then compile them into lists and mass email everyone on them with their rubbish using some dodgy program or other!

It doesn't mean your PC is sending stuff , or that you've been hacked , just that they have spoofed your email address!

Hopefully someone with more accurate info than me can elaborate?

Wig

1. Change your password.
2. It probably wasn't actually sent from your account, it is most likely just written (cleverly) to make it look like it has come from your account.
3. I doubt it had a virus on it. You would have had to follow a link to a website or opened up a an attachment file to get a virus, not just simply opened the email.

booler

See http://www.pcworld.com/article/253305/minimize_your_exposure_to_email_spoofing.html