[Closed] People recieving spam from my email address

This happened to my Dad's AOL address. I guessed that someone had got hold of his password and then accessed his contacts and now using outside of AOL so changing his password doesn't help - is that likely?

This has just happened to one of the secretaries at work (local pct) - even the medical director was recieving offers of cheap viagra! 😆

They're not actually coming from your e-mail address, they're just "spoofing" i.e. looks like its come from you, but they're not.

u can haz been pwnd.

Anyone know how to sort this? it's a Yahoo.com address

Eh Tom db, spake inglish

Someone has a bot.

It could be one of two things.

1) It could be due to spyware on your PC. Download Malwarebytes and see what it comes back with.

2) It could be dumb luck. Your address has been plucked at random / maliciously by a spammer who is "spoofing" your address and pretending to be you. Not a lot you can do about that other than changing your address or waiting till it goes away. Chances are it'll stop after the initial flurry.

Most likely to be a virus on someone's PC who has you in their Email address book. The virus picks two Email addresses from the address book and uses one as the recipient and the other as the (spoofed) sender.

Nowt you can do about it, the EMail protocol is prehistoric and very easy to spoof.

Good point, well made.

One thing that so many people STILL do is to send out a group email with all the recipients in the CC address box!

I wish people would use the BCC address box to hide everyone's email address from everyone else.

It's quite hard to convince people to do this though! Or even to get them to understand why they should...

I'd be more concerned about the new orange 5 I've just ordered with your credit card, thanks! 😀

If it gone to your contacts, then I reckon like me your account was hacked (probably due to spyware, used anyone elses computer lately?). I changed my password (yahoo suggested i delete the account), recreated my address book, as they deleted it, and sent out an email apology.

I totally agree on the use if the BCC field, I don't half far some weird stuff from ppl I've been CC'd into.

It's quite hard to convince people to do this though! Or even to get them to understand why they should...

I give out a different email address to people who I don't know / trust well enough to understand this. They only get my 'real' address when they've proved not to be stupid.