Eeeeeeek - E-mail cloning?

[blacksquirrel]

My e-mail was just flooded with a ton of delivery failure notices from spam supposedly sent from my account. None of it is listed in my sent mail, so I don't think anyone's hacked my account. Does anyone know what is going on? And more importantly what I can do to stop it?

Comments

[lonelywalker]

Sounds like it's actually just spam masquerading as delivery failure notifs, no?

[blacksquirrel]

That's what I thought at first, but there's just *so many* - over 100 in the last hour, with all different addresses and origins. And they list me in the "sent from" header. Eeeeek! I really like this e-mail username - I don't want to have to give it up.

[tournevis]

What lonelywalker is quite possible. It is also entirely possible that you have a virus that is using your information to send emails itself, bypassing your email programme. I would scan my system post haste.

[blacksquirrel]

Good call - I'm doing multiple scans now

[the_shoshanna]

It is also possible that a spam machine somewhere forged your address as its FROM address, so its bounces are going to you. In which case, I don't think there's much you can do about it, except to tighten up your own spam filters to perhaps spare you some of it, alert your ISP and see if they can help filter the flood, and hunker down until it passes.

[blacksquirrel]

Yes! A techie friend of mine also just alerted me to this possibility, and I'm really rather relieved by this possibility (as opposed to the virus possibility). I'm still scanning like mad, but nothing has turned up yet, so I think this is most likely. I have contacted my e-mail provider, but it may be a system-wide problem for them, as I've received nothing but a generic "Your concerns are important to us" message back. We'll see.

Thank you!

[revolutionaryjo]

I have no advice, but good luck! D:

[blacksquirrel]

Thank you. I'm up to around 600 of them since 3pm