Every now and again, we get this question. “I am receiving spam sent by me to me! How do I stop this? I have Windows Live Mail and have checked to save all sent messages. These spam messages aren’t in the sent file.”
They aren’t in the sent file because you aren’t actually sending them. Spammers are just spoofing your e-mail address as the address where the e-mail is originating.
You may have accidentally opened something, or given your e-mail address to a site that borrowed your address for this purpose, but it’s more likely that a friend who wasn’t too careful about visiting sites or clicking on suspicious e-mails gave spammers access to his or her address book. Or she could have sent out an e-mail with multiple addresses, including yours, as the recipients. Someone who received that e-mail might have malware on his PC that used all of the addresses as a return address for spam.
There’s not much you can do to stop them from using your address. Just make sure your virus protection is up-to-date and your e-mail password is secure.
~ Cynthia
I was advised to mark such as SPAM. Supposedly your provider will recognize that it is not YOU sending SPAM but that u got spoofed.
Several years ago Erin wrote a great computer tip for the WorldStart newsletter about this exact issue. Here’s what it said:
I received this tip from a very kind newsletter reader and I thought it would be perfect to share with the rest of you. It makes a lot of sense and it’s so simple to do, so listen up! Okay, so we all know that when your e-mail is infected with a virus, it goes straight to your address book. The virus looks for the addresses you have saved and it starts to send itself off to everyone listed. The virus then, of course, infects all of those people as well. So, how can we stop this from happening? Well, here’s an idea on where to start.
Open your address book and go to New Contact, just like you would if you really were adding a new friend to your list. For the name, simply type in the letter A. Then for the e-mail address, type in “aaaaaa@aaa.aaa.” (Or however you want to do it. Just make sure it’s in an e-mail address format). Since you used the letter A, it will be the first entry to be listed in your address book, which is where the virus would start when sending itself off to all your friends. Now, here’s the catch. Since the e-mail address you entered is not valid, the message the virus sends will be undeliverable. Therefore, it will not be able to go any further to anyone else in your address book.
There’s also another advantage to this. If the first e-mail cannot be delivered successfully, you will receive an e-mail yourself notifying you of the undeliverable mail. This will warn you right away that you are infected with a virus and you can do what you need to do to get rid of it (run your virus scan and fix it!) Now, go and tell all your friends to do this as well. If everyone does, none of you will ever be infected again! Pretty genius, isn’t it?!
~ Erin
Thanks, will try for a week or two to see if it works for me, then i’ll send it to all my frinds.
Bob /
Sounds like a great response,,,,,I’m on board to try it because the self-spamming plague just happened to me…though by looking at the sender’s information, it seems they b”piggy-backed” my email address onto another stranger’s email address…..