Someone is spoofing my e-mail account

[alley]

I have been getting numerous e-mails for the past couple of days from a on-line drug company using my own e-mail address---can't block myself in msn hotmail...so, anyone know what I can do???


I've changed pass words---but I guess that really doesnt help.

 

[BAMA32]

They don't need to login to your email to spoof it. In fact, more than likely they're not doing anything but changing the From/Reply header on the email. It's not very complicated to do, and any regular joe schmoe could do it too. But that doesn't mean your actual email account has actually been compromised. If you view more detailed headers of the emails, you'll see the real email source and then perhaps you can block that if your email client has the capability. You can also have your email mark it as junk mail automatically by applying a filter based on the subject. This is the easiest thing to do.

 

[alley]

I've replied to the e-mail and was sent to my own account--

And I tried to mark it as junk but hotmail said I could not block my own account.

 

[BAMA32]

Ah, you're using hotmail. Okay, when viewing your Inbox, right-click on the culprit email and you'll get a popup window of menu items. Choose to View Message Source. This contains the full header of the email in a new window that you can now save as a text file (this shows the original source of the email that is faking your email address on their side).

To report these kinds of e-mails, send the e-mail message as an attachment with the full message header to report_spam@hotmail.com and also abuse@hotmail.com.

That's the best you can do for now, because to spoof an email address is easy and they're not hacking into your account to do so. Changing your password is a good idea anyway, but short of reporting the problematic emails not much else to do but make a new email address or delete the spoofed ones till they stop.

 

[alley]

Thanks---I'll try that tomorrow and see if it works.

Hate to get rid of the account, I've used it for years and have many contacts on it.

 

[BAMA32]

Yeah, it rather sucks. Usually I ignore it, and delete the junk mail. There's no security risk if they're only spoofing yourself to yourself.

 

[seven2go]

You can report that shit till your balls fall off........those guys change ips more often than you scratch your ass.......

Too bad the son-of-a-bitch who figured out that little header thing wasn't shot a day earlier.......

 

[Corny]

Too bad the son-of-a-bitch who figured out that little header thing wasn't shot a day earlier.......

Then you need to kill the inventor of e-mail. It is like that by design.

Ican't block myself in msn hotmail..

And that's why they are doing it.

 

[BAMA32]

They really should re-standardize email and header functionality.

 

[seven2go]

Then you need to kill the inventor of e-mail. It is like that by design.



And that's why they are doing it.

Spoofing the "from" in the header is NOT that way from email developers........it was MADE that way by spammers....... bastards.......

 

[Corny]

Ahem ..

http://james.apache.org/server/rfclist/smtp/rfc0821.txt

It was not any Spammers idea. It has been like that from the beginning of time, so that servers can send mails that look like coming from private mailboxes.