dodgy angelina jolie email equals virus?

[swedeheart]

Today I received an email from myself or rather from my own email address. The subject was an offer to purchase a dodgy video featuring Angelina Jolie. Really freaked me out. (The sender address, not the video!)

My question is, does this necessarily mean that I have a virus "inside my email" if you see what I mean.

(And if so, does it thereby follow that people I know will also be getting Angelina emails from me...)

I have never posted the email address in question on the internet but I have of course used it when signing up to different sites (no dodgy ones). Only yesterday I used it for getting a free Flickr account. But I checked the security settings of that account immediately and chose to let my email address remain invisible. If memory serves invisibility was the default setting, so I don't believe my email address could have been "out there" even for a second.

Additional info: The spam mail was written i English, but the email address in question is one I use almost exclusively for writing in Swedish.

[Jillius]

I got one of those too !! I couldn't understand how it could have been sent from myself when I didn't do it.
I deleted it straightaway.

[swedeheart]

Hi Jillius, is it important that I should delete it? (I thought perhaps some future virus fighter might need to look at it.) Did you get yours after having signed up to some new account?

[Ethel]

Look at the original source of the email, and read it from the bottom.

You should see where it came from .

[swedeheart]

Really...? Hackers aren't any smarter than that?! Not saying you're wrong, Ethel, I'm just expressing great surprise. Too late now though, I deleted it after having read Jillius' reply...

But let's say the same thing happens tomorrow and I do have a look, I'm still not sure what you're saying I should do in order to conclude whether I have a virus "inside my email" (see original question) or not?

And I didn't think you were supposed to open dodgy emails at all - much less click on attachments of course, but I thought you shouldn't even open the email? Right? Wrong?

[Jillius]

I didn't really take much notice of it. I was just wondering how it could have come from my own email address. I deleted it straight away without really thinking about it. I'm not aware that it appeared after signing up for something, I certainly hadn't signed up for a new account or anything.

[dabees]

To find the sender of an email, firstly follow this link.
http://www.ip-adress.com/faq/view_email_header /

Then paste the details on this page to find the sender.

http://www.ip-adress.com/trace_email/

[swedeheart]

Thanks Jillius. It's just that it's freaking me out to think people may be receiving weird emails from me. Angelina Jolie wouldn't be the worst as that would so obviously be spam, but who knows what "they" might send. Thanks for answering.

[Jillius]

If I get another one I will make sure I read it thoroughly before deleting it.

[swedeheart]

Thanks dabees, I'll try that if it happens again!

[Jillius]

I just went onto google and typed in angelina jolie spam email. It tells you about it. Not sure if it's the same ones that we got but I think it will only cause a problem if you actually download the video.

[swedeheart]

Well there are millions of Angelina Jolie spam mails out there so did you find info specifically about those that state you yourself as the sender, Jillius?

[Jillius]

Now you mention it, no ! I only looked at the first few.

[swedeheart]

'Cos that is what I'm worried about, you see. Not the spamming as such. Thanks for answering.

[rojash]

Imagine I sent you, not an e-mail, but a normal letter, and on the back I wrote "From:" followed by your address. On receiving it and seeing that it purported to come from your address, would you think "Arrggghhh, there's a ghost in nt house sending letters to me!" or would you think "Some little liar's pretending that I sent this to myself"?

[Jillius]

rojash, that is a completely different thing altogether. If someone tried to use my email address then surely when they tried to set it up, it would say there is already an email address under this name and it wouldn't be allowed.

[squarebear]

Anyone can send an email looking as though it's from anyone at all. You MUST be very careful when trusting anything coming via email.

[squarebear]

Oh and no you don't have a virus. Well not unless you click on the links in the email.

[swedeheart]

rojash I'll have to agree with Jillius that is not a valid analogy but if it was indeed meant to reassure me then thank you. Thanks squarebear. I do know not to click on the attachments and I haven't done that. Know for a fact there were attacks from my computer/IP-address a while back (as I received angry letters from my broadband supplier about it - even though I subscribe to their anti-virus and firewall services!) so I'm really just trying to figure out what's going on. I've spent the better part of the day on the phone with them so I'm hoping it's all sorted now. Thanks guys.

[rojash]

It's a valid analogy insofar as the address from which an email appears to come is entirely at the whim of the sender.