Scam?

[muskox]

Keep being sent cross e - mail messages from people I do not know, claiming that I am sending them spam e mails and attachments, threatening to report me. (7 people, so far)

I have not replied to any of them and have sent their protestations to spam!

Is this a scam? How can I prevent this happening?

I could not find a 'live chat' link or direct contact telephone number for Googlemail.

Any thoughts please?

[woofgang]

who are they going to report you to? delete and block.

[Old_Geezer]

I'd ensure they all went to spam too.
Ignore them; but do run a scan of your PC just in case.

[muskox]

I imagine that 'they' are going to report me to Googlemail, if they can find a contact number!

Have just had a thorough overhaul of my computer, including a scan.

Thank you for your support.

[ubasses]

It sounds like your Email address has been hi-jacked and they are now using it to send out spam mail. Quite common unfortunately, most of the recipients probably know this and will just be blocking and deleting, you are just being contacted by the very few who don't.

[Buenchico]

Spammers try to defeat spam filters by making their emails look as if they've come from a legitimate source. To do so, they enter a valid email address (possibly obtained by hacking into a legitimate website) in the 'From' and/or 'Reply' field(s) of their emails. That then results in the person who owns that address receiving lots of complaints and, possibly, finding that his/her own genuine outgoing messages then get blocked by spam filters.