Unusual E-Mails

[woolfy42]

I started to block lots of sources of junk mail on Outlook recently, but now I've started to receive e-mails that say they come from me.

Has anyone had this experience or is this normal?

[chrisgel]

This happens a lot and I believe that if you change your password for your e-mail that might help. No doubt someone will come along soon and give you a full explanation,

[FredPuli43]

And you may find, as I did, that everyone on your contact list gets emails "from you" as well. Advised simply to change the password to my email account, I found that stopped it.

[momoko]

thank you for bring this up. i also receive email from myself too. obviously i never open them. i will try to change password, hope will hel.

[woolfy42]

Thanks for those responses. Damn I never thought of others getting similar messages "from me". The more I think about this, the more worrying it is!! You could be set up as any kind of criminal. I can't think how I could send a message from me purporting to be from someone else - I thought that wasn't possible? Is it something working from within my e-mail account?

[Maydup]

As I understand it, there are programmes and servers that scan the internet looking for accounts to hack. They try for example to open our accounts using random passwords and they hit on some as someone somewhere will have that password. This happens more frequently to you if your password is not very cryptic. eg if your password is elvis or Michael Jackson, you'll be hacked most days!

So change the password and make sure you have a couple of numbers as well as letters but not too easy, so don't use name and birthyear for example.

[woolfy42]

My password is cryptic but I never really log out. I suppose they have had about 7 years to find it! I don't think that's the answer somehow. A hacker would lock me out and do something nasty it seems to me.

[Maydup]

Sure, some do nasty things, others are just data mining to sell stuff to all your contacts who open it thinking its recommended by you.

[woolfy42]

OK, thanks a lot.