lokokkee

Lately, I have been getting loads of 'undelivered mail' messages with attachments when I have not sent out any. Naturally, deleted all of them without opening. Just wondered what it is all about?

Danbo

Ive been getting sent virus alert emails apparantly for something i sent out......but to people who are not in my address book and I have no idea who they are. And of course the file they are on about I have no knowledge of!!

JackClark

A virus has been using your email address in infected emails sent from someone else's machine. It gathers this from a variety of sources on the infected computer. When a virus is detected in the email or the address it's sent to is not valid you as the spoofed sender get the alert. Nothing you can do about it other that educate everyone online in 'safe hex'.

Fig

They would be the result of a virus on someone elses computer that has your email address in their address book. Your details are being "spoofed" as the sender, so when the recipients antivirus software rejects the message, you get the failed to deliver message.

Danbo

Thought it would be something like that..........

Thanks guys.

JackClark

>>in their address book
Any virus author worth his salt will add a routine that scans more than the address book for email addresses. Bagle for instance scan's files on you machine with these extensions
.ADB
.ASP
.CFG
.DBX
.EML
.HTM
.HTML
.MDX
.MMF
.NCH
.ODS
.PHP
.PL
.SHT
.TXT
.WAB
There are also viruses that go a step further and make up a few addresses, say they find jack@home.com and me@work.com they will send infected mail to jack@work.com and me@home.com.

Sneaky little buggers and usually hansome too.

lokokkee

Thanks for the info. Just out of curiosity, what are in the attached files? A virus that can infect my PC if I open it? Or will my Norton Antivirus program be able to catch them (when updated with the latest virus database, of course). Will this automatically stop once the infected PC with my email address got cleaned up? Just thought that this is not too smart a way to spread a virus cos the recipient will be wary opening the mail when he didn't send it in the first place. More dangerous if it takes over someone's PC and send mail to the contact list addresses, where the recipient will be more likely to open mail from someone he/she knows. That's how I caught a virus previously and Norton was unable to stop it.

JackClark

Think of them all as infected and delete them, it's safer. Norton should catch them but no antivirus can claim 100% detection.