Received Email From My Own Email Address...

[LaoPo]

Today I received an email, sent from my own email address (no hotmail or gmail or anything like it) with a link to a Google site.

BUT, I didn't sent it and of course I didn't open it.

Strange, as this has never happened before !

How is that possible ?

LaoPo

[mocean]

Everyone can use your email address to send an email. That's one of the flaws of the email system.

Spammers use this to to send an email from your own address, and bypass your spamfilter. So don't worry

[CosmicSurfer]

Today I received an email, sent from my own email address (no hotmail or gmail or anything like it) with a link to a Google site.

BUT, I didn't sent it and of course I didn't open it.

Strange, as this has never happened before !

How is that possible ?

LaoPo

It's a Spammer or Spoofer that picked up your address from some place on the web... Nothing you can do about it, No way you can stop it.....

BUT... DO NOT click on any Link or Attachmnet... Repeat... DO NOT Click on any link or Attachment...

Juust delete it from your Email Server... and Forget about it.

Good Luck

CS

[Cuban]

>Everyone can use your email address to send an email. That's one of the flaws of the email system.

To slightly expand on the above answer:

A feature of the protocol that email is based upon is that the email message itself has a number of spaces (data fields) for information like the "intended recipient", "sender's email address" and the "return email address", "CC", "BCC", etc etc. within the email datagram (think of email like a picture postcard with spaces for the sender name and address as well as name and address of the person it is being sent to).

What someone has done (or rather set up a piece of software to do) is send a spam email to so many million email addresses with the sender's FROM email address set to be the same as the "intended recipient's" TO email address. This is done for two main reasons, partly to try to get past email spam filters that filter on known spammer's FROM addresses (or email domains) and partly to hook your interest in getting an email from yourself - which it achieved.

So the spammer is not sending spam email from your email account (that is - they are not hacking into your account and typing messages), but simply using your email address to send spam email to you. Just as if you had got a picture postcard through the post addressed to you with the offer of cheap Viagra but was signed with your name.

Huge subject there is a link below if you would like futher reading on this topic.

The spamming email base code would look something like this:

C: MAIL FROM:<[email protected]>

S: 250 Ok

C: RCPT TO:<[email protected]>

S: 250 Ok

C: DATA

S: 354 End data with <CR><LF>.<CR><LF>

C: From: "LaoPo" <[email protected]>

C: To: "LaoPo" <[email protected]>

C: Cc:

C: Date: Thu, 27 Mar 2008 11:20:43 -0700

C:

C: Subject: Life is about the journey

C:

C: Hello Everyone,

C: I just wanted to tell everyone about the journey.

C: Your friend,

C: LaoPo.

C: .

S: 250 Ok: queued as 12346

C: QUIT

Once more our friend Wikipedia leaps in with this fairly easy to understand overview of the flaws/features of the system that allow the wonderful email system to be easily abused.

Edited March 27, 2008 by Cuban

[LaoPo]

Thank you all for your help. Learned something today, again.

LaoPo

[billd766]

I have exactly the same problem, however I would like to buy some of the Viagra that I am selling (supposedly) at the silly price.

I had thought that it would be a good idea to blacklist the email address at my server but then I would not get any email at all.

I HATE spammers.

[mikethevigoman]

Today I received an email, sent from my own email address (no hotmail or gmail or anything like it) with a link to a Google site.

BUT, I didn't sent it and of course I didn't open it.

Strange, as this has never happened before !

How is that possible ?

LaoPo

Some kind soul wrote to the taxman from my address and i received an emal from them replying to it ! how could that happen ?

[Cuban]

> Some kind soul wrote to the taxman from my address and i received an emal

> from them replying to it ! how could that happen ?

Exactly in the way described above. ( I was under the impression the tax office did not use email. )

Did the tax office want to buy the cheap drugs or the cheap Rolex watches ?

Talking of emails I had one from the IRS offering me a $450 refund - all I had to do was send a processing fee.....