Is a spammer using my account

[MoneyGuy]

I just got 11 notifications of returned emails due to inaccurate addresses. I didn't send them. Did a spammer do this? Should I notify my ISP (Shaw)?

[NuclearPizzaMan]

it is probably just spam trying to bait you into opening an attachment or following a link to "fix the problem"

can you show us one of the bounced messages?

[Street Pharmacist]

Originally Posted by MoneyGuy

I just got 11 notifications of returned emails due to inaccurate addresses. I didn't send them. Did a spammer do this? Should I notify my ISP (Shaw)?

In my experience it is a breach. Change your password

[Rathji]

Your ISP likely can't do anything about someone sending out spam as your address.

However, I think it is more likely that your computer has been infected or your account compromised, depending on what the bouceback messages actually are. Can't hurt to change your password immediately, but don't do it on the computer you normally check email on (and your Mail client is). Instead use webmail on another machine, or your phone.

[MoneyGuy]

Originally Posted by NuclearPizzaMan

it is probably just spam trying to bait you into opening an attachment or following a link to "fix the problem"

can you show us one of the bounced messages?

I'd love to but don't know how I can do that without opening one, which I don't want to do.

I'll see if more come in. All 11 came in within three or four minutes of each other earlier today and so far nothing more than those. I'll report back.

Thanks for the advice.

[Rathji]

What does the header say?

[MoneyGuy]

Don't know what the header is, but this is essentially the message:

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.

Delivery to the following recipients failed.

someone@somewhere.com

I'd be happy to send one of these to someone to look at if anyone wants to PM me an email address. I don't really care because I'm not opening one of these anyway, but will send it if someone wants to see it.

[kyuusei]

I'd change my password regardless if I were you. And maybe the password to anything else that might be linked to that e-mail address, like an MSN account. Something similar happened to me once by way of spammers getting my MSN password.

[photon]

Two factor authentication only for my email now, just too much depends on email.

[Rathji]

Originally Posted by MoneyGuy

Don't know what the header is, but this is essentially the message:

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.

Delivery to the following recipients failed.

someone@somewhere.com

I'd be happy to send one of these to someone to look at if anyone wants to PM me an email address. I don't really care because I'm not opening one of these anyway, but will send it if someone wants to see it.

Sent you a PM with an email to send it to.

I doubt the email itself is malicious, given the subject.

[Azure]

Originally Posted by photon

Two factor authentication only for my email now, just too much depends on email.

This. No other way to do it. Set it up with my phone, which has a rotating code that makes it even easier to login.

[MoneyGuy]

Originally Posted by Rathji

Sent you a PM with an email to send it to.

I doubt the email itself is malicious, given the subject.

I've sent you one of the emails.

[Rathji]

Looks like it might be incoming spam, directed at your address.

If it is, it is the best engineered spam I have ever seen, since it looks like a legit bounce (at least on my phone). The only thing that makes it look fake to me is that 'postmaster@mail.hotmail.com' is sending you this message.

I will examine it more when I get onto a computer that I can actually open it properly without any risk.

[smoothpops]

Check your sent messages, and then change your password

[Rathji]

Was there any attachments with the email? .txt perhaps?

[NuclearPizzaMan]

Originally Posted by MoneyGuy

Don't know what the header is, but this is essentially the message:

This is an automatically generated Delivery Status Notification.

Delivery to the following recipients failed.

someone@somewhere.com

I'd be happy to send one of these to someone to look at if anyone wants to PM me an email address. I don't really care because I'm not opening one of these anyway, but will send it if someone wants to see it.

Yeah. You can ignore this problem, nothing you can do about it.

http://www.sevensages.com/Company-Ne...n-Failure.html

http://email.about.com/od/spamfighti...d_Not_Send.htm

Just some jerk spoofing your name in some spam they are sending, or sending faked DSNs to people with their own email address trying to trick you into opening bad stuff.

[Rathji]

Yeah, someone has been sending email either as your address, or from your computer and it is being rejected because it 'looks like spam'.

This is happening either due to an an infection on your machine or spoofing your address (since I assume it is publicly posted somewhere).

I doubt you know this, but do you know if your domain has spf or txt entries in the DNS which would help make sure that only email from your mail host servers are accepted? The reason I ask is if enough spam gets sent from your address, your domain might become blacklisted, and adding those entries could possibly help prevent that, since they tell servers to drop mail automatically. I am not 100% on how much it will help though, someone else might have a better idea about it.

As for an infection, there are lots of options but the simplest would be to download and install Malware Bytes and Hitman Pro. Both have 30 day trials which will be more than enough to get you cleaned up. You could also download SuperAntiSpyware. If they don't come up with anything then assume it is them spoofing your address.

[MoneyGuy]

Many thanks to Rathji and others who have advised me on this. Rathji and I have been discussing this off-line so I have an idea of how I need to deal with this. Thanks, all. Spammers...get a life.