Has this been happening to you?

[BuckyXTC]

For the past week or so, I've been deluged with "returned email" or "undeliverable" email messages. I don't send that many emails to start with, but the interesting thing is that many of these emails contain "escort" email addresses as if I had sent email to them, which I haven't.. Also, some of them indicate that a virus was found in the emails by "BrightMail" at AOL. I don't have a clue as to what is going on with this, but I'm wondering if anyone else is receiving these kinds of messages. Needless to say, I'm not downloading attachments from these messages.

 

Any insight as to what might be going on? I would have posted this in Daddy's forum, but figured more folks would see it here.

[RM]

This sounds similar to the Klez worm that infected my computer about six months ago. It required following somewhat complicated instructions from McAfee's website to get rid of it. Files had to be renamed because the virus can recognize and delete antivirus software. I've heard Norton also has complicated instructions to get rid of it.

[RM]

This sounds similar to the Klez worm that infected my computer about six months ago. It required following somewhat complicated instructions from McAfee's website to get rid of it. Files had to be renamed because the virus can recognize and delete antivirus software. I've heard Norton also has complicated instructions to get rid of it.

[+ Hoover42]

You might want to run a virus scan of your machine. You can get have your machine scanned automatically by visiting the Trend Micro web site at:

 

http://housecall.antivirus.com/housecall/start_corp.asp

[+ Hoover42]

You might want to run a virus scan of your machine. You can get have your machine scanned automatically by visiting the Trend Micro web site at:

 

http://housecall.antivirus.com/housecall/start_corp.asp

[+ deej]

If you're getting bounced e-mail that you didn't send in the first place, a spammer is probably using your address as the return address on what they send out. It's perfect for them: they could care less about what bounces, just what gets responses.

 

Happened to me about a year ago. At the height, I was getting several hundred bounces/hour.

 

I ended up cancelling that account because MSN customer service was equipped to handle exactly two issues: billing & cancellation. I suspect AOL may be better equipped.

[BuckyXTC]

Thanks for all the input.

 

I'm using a Mac, and I've run Norton Antivirus with the latest definitions, and everything comes up clean, so I think it's probably not a worm or virus doing this.

 

deej, you're probably correct that some spammer is using my email address. It's a real pain to change that address, as I am using a broadband cable connection and changes are problematic.

[Guest Pulsator]

I had this problem a few weeks ago on AOL. All of a sudden when I signed on in the morning there would be 300+ email messages, all bounces, and when I looked at my "sent mail" fail it appeared that I had been sending out hundreds of messages to a long, alphabetical list of email address. The messages were all identical - a one-liner about clicking for info about refinancing a mortgage. Finally I was shut down by AOL-TOS because some recipients complained to them that I was spamming with a commercial message. I called AOL (the usual being on-hold for about 20 minutes) and explained to them that somebody (some worm or something) seemed to have taken over my computer. They said that somebody had cracked my password and commandeered my account to send these out, and that the simple solution was to create a new password. They assigned me a temporary password that would last a few minutes to let me sign on, then I created new passwords for all my screen names. No need to change any of the screen names. I still got residual bumped messages for a day or two and then it stopped.

The advice they gave is to change passwords on a regular basis and not using an regular pattern of letters and numbers.

It seems somebody may be using a computer program that generates millions of combinations of random letters and number which they automatically test to sign on to a screen name they've selected, and when they hit the right combo - whoopy, out goes the spam.

[Guest fukamarine]

>It seems somebody may be using a computer program that

>generates millions of combinations of random letters and

>number which they automatically test to sign on to a screen

>name they've selected, and when they hit the right combo -

>whoopy, out goes the spam.

 

It boggles my imagination as to why anyone would take the time, trouble & effort to do this. What possible pleasure could it give them? They must have way too much time on their hands - small things amuse small minds!

 

fukamarine

[jackhammer91406]

Not being an AOL customer, I haven't been bitten by this bug. But I am having a similar problem because of my account on yahoo. Also, since in the RW, my DSL account is with SBC Global (they have recently begun using Yahoo as their portal) I am getting a ton of spam, everything from Refi come ons to porn (especially porn) Yahoo apparently doesn't much care even though they offer some perfunctory spam block in the yahoo mail area, they allow porn through the SBC account with no block. I am very frustrated because even though I don't have a thing against pornography per se, I like to be the one who decides where I get it from . (control freak)

[Justice]

Lately, my ISP (I have a cable modem) has been sending me e-mails notifying me that their anitvirus protection system had detected a virus in e-mail that was being sent to me. :o The notice also informs me that the offending e-mail has been deleted, because the virus can't be cleaned, and that I should notify the sender of the problem. The name of the virus is always the same, but I don't recognize any of the e-mail addresses. (There's more than one of them.) Obviously some hacker is trying to infect my machine. :o x( I've updated my own virus protection system -- call me paranoid, because I use both Norton's and Microsoft's -- and I'm very careful about whose e-mails I open. (Not that that's always foolproof. x()

 

The annoying thing is that this particular e-mail address gets very little Spam, because I use a Hotmail address for all of my commercial and adult activities. (My Hotmail account, on the other hand, gets tons of Spam.) Some sick person is obviously going through a lot of trouble. x(

[+ deej]

>It boggles my imagination as to why anyone would take the

>time, trouble & effort to do this.

 

It doesn't take that much time and it's not that much effort.

 

Password cracking routines have existed for as long as there have been computers. The rest is probably automated and requires no human intervention at all.

 

All they need to get started is a known-to-be valid address, which is why the usual mantra is NEVER REPLY TO SPAM, EVEN TO CLICK ON A REMOVE LINK.

 

It's also why a good rule of thumb is to change your password frequently, don't use just a single word that can be found in the dictionary (they run the dictionary database first usually), and include a digit or punctuation mark.

[Justice]

Recently, there was a front page article, in The Wall Street Journal, about a woman who is a professional spammer. She was quite proud of the junk e-mail business that she runs out of her house in Florida. A single parent, she wouldn't reveal her income, but she did concede that she does very well. (If memory serves, she gets a couple of pennies per e-mail.) To her credit, she claims to use traceable e-mail addresses. She also said that she honors every request to be removed from her list(s). (From what I've read, most spammers don't use traceable addresses and use removal requests to verify that an e-mail address is valid.)

 

They also interviewed the guy who is her programmer. He also was quite proud of what he does for a living. He is particularly proud of what he needs to do to get around anti-spam systems. He wouldn't reveal his tricks, but he did say that he uses the names of friends (some friend! x(), in the return address field, in order to make the Spam look more like legitimate e-mail.

 

The subsequent letters to the editor were as venomous as any I've ever seen.

[+ deej]

Interesting. I recently changed my DSL to SBC/Yahoo and haven't had a single SPAM e-mail on those accounts.

 

If SPAM is getting to you, download MailWasher at http://www.mailwasher.net . It'll kill spam before it ever hits your inbox, and also let you bounce spam so they think your mail address isn't real.

[+ deej]

The technical journals have lately been peppered with articles about spam, and warnings that e-mail will soon be an unreliable communications medium because of it. Legitimate messages are already being deleted unread because they get lost in the jumble of spam.

 

(Which, by the way, is how spam e-mail got its name in the first place: the Monty Python skit!)

 

The Direct Marketing Association maintains opt-out lists (for snail mail, e-mail, and telemarketing) which is an attempt by the direct marketing industry to self-regulate consumer irritation. Unfortunately, the only marketers who'll use their services are the ones that aren't likely to be a problem in the first place. (Get on the lists at http://www.thedma.org)

 

The spammers that steal return addresses or use untraceable addresses aren't likely to go out of their way to make sure they're not annoying you. x(

 

One of the reasons it's so out of hand is because there are no penalties for abuse. With snail mail, there are fraud charges that can apply. But who has jurisdiction over world-wide e-mail?

[BuckyXTC]

Justice:

 

Same situation for me, I have cable modem, and getting the same messages about viruses in email. At least I was. Now, for at least the past 24 hours, I haven't had any more "mail returned" messages. Let's hope that by running the latest virus definitions, I got rid of the problem. I'm still not convinced that my computer had a virus, because I don't think there is a "Klez" worm on the Mac platform, but I could be wrong.