Spam - what's happening?

[Coldicote]

Within the past 3 hours or so I've received over 3,000 junk emails that Orange consigned to my junk bin, also several hundred in the 'InBox' that I deleted. I guess they're still coming in as I write this to AnswerBank. They are all to do with mailing systems, supposedly undelivered mail and nothing to do with me. Initially I attempted to receive them in the normal way through MailWasher and Outlook Express, but there were clearly too many for the system to cope with and it choked and came to a standstill. For that reason I went to Orange webmail and sorted them out there. This is sheer destructive lunacy.

Is anyone else having the same problem and what are you doing about it please?

[ChuckFickens]

two things might have happend..

one is a spammer somewhere has sent a load of emails out with your email address faked as the originating address, so any that are sent to non-existent addresses the non delivery replies are coming back to you. It's the same as when you receive normal spam you can pretty much guarantee that the reply address is fake Unfortunately theres not a whole lot you can do about this reason.. they will probably stop after a couple of days though.


The second and far more serious reason this may happen is if your computer has become infected with a virus or spyware that is causing it to actually send out thousands of emails

just in case it's the latter reason you should be running a full system scan with your anti virus software (please say you do have some!), and if you haven't already got some, get some anti spyware software and run a full scan with that. get adaware free from the link below if you haven't got anti spyware software

http://assets.trialpay.com.s3.amazonaws.com/la vasoft/images/button_download_free_refl.gif

[Ethel]

Your pc is sending out spam and you are receiving undelivered notices of the emails that don't exist.

Read this:
http://support.microsoft.com/?kbid=324059

[zabo]

they must love you. lol

[ChuckFickens]

Ethel,

I very much doubt coldicote is running a Microsoft exchange server :)

[Coldicote]

I've updated Norton Internet Security - there was just one update - and will now run a full system scan which will take some time. Since starting this item I see that Orange webmail has consigned a further 260 to Junk mail, but thankfully none have come through into Mailwasher and Outlook Express. I have several email addresses and a few spot checks all point to one of them. I'll report again in due course, after the full scan by Norton. Bye for the moment.

[Coldicote]

Just to update, I have completed a full system scan with Norton which has given the all clear as far as viruses are concerned. Undoubtedly someone has hijacked my email address and is just making a nuisance of themselves. Thanks for the link Ethel - I'll have to do a bit of homework on that one as some of the terminology is new to me. Thanks again.

[ChuckFickens]

Coldicote

Although Ethels answers are normally spot on that link will be of no assistance to you as it is dealing with Microsoft exchange servers which is nothing to do with home email systems, they are used in a business environment.

if norton didn't pick anything up try adaware too as a lot of anti virus software doesn't pickup spyware of malware.

[Coldicote]

I'm relieved to say that the 'undelivered mail' activity has slowed down since the problem started. 350+ came in overnight, but about half were 'ordinary' spam.

Orange Webmail and MailWasher are doing a good job and it now seems to be under control. Chuck, I'm interested to try adaware, but hesitate because there are many sources one can download from and I don't know which to trust! Thanks everyone for your help.

[ChuckFickens]

oh yes my link earlier didn't work...

Get the free version of adaware from here

http://www.download.com/Ad-Aware-2008/3000-802 2_4-10045910.html?part=dl-ad-aware&subj=dl&tag =top5&cdlPid=10844457