Outlook keeps sending spam

[John Munsey Jr]

I have a Win2k machine here with Office XP & Outlook 2002 that keeps
sending out messages, especially upon startup.

I have run Norton 2003 on the box, spybot S&D 1.3 and Ad Aware 6 with
all the latest updates. I have also ran several free online virus
scanner and eveen the latest stinger.

I ran a network monitor and saw the addresses of the recipients are
spam - one was @awaytogetadate.com and numerous others.

I also ran filemon but could not see any unusual files getting
accessed, but I am not sure if I am using it correctly. Winword.exe
does gets tarted though when I start Outlook - not sure if this is
normal.

In any case, sometime when I start up Outlook 50 or more messages get
sent out - none of them ever show on sent items or are in the outbox.

Any ideas how to track down and eliminate this problem?

Thanks

John M

 

[Rob Schneider]

Keep it simple. Try reformatting.

Hope this is useful to you. Let us know.

rms

 

[George Hester]

That may be simple but it is also destructive. Keeping things simple without destruction why don't we try this and see what happens:

Change your profile POP3 and SMTP to something which is bogus so that Outlook cannot send or receive anything. It will try you'll get an error and from that we may be able to determine the culprit.

 

[Anita Malchiodi]

Dear John,
I'm no expert here but have you tried disconnecting your
network connections before booting up to see what
opportunity arises when the messages can't be sent on
start up? Meaning, will you get an error message because
the messages can be sent... and will that give you an
opportunity to study those faked headers?
I'm hoping you or someone else can help me with a
situation:
Like you, I have Nortons (Internet Security and fully
updated), SpyBot and Stopzilla to battle all those nasties
out there. Even though my PC is clean and regularly
updated, etc., the sort of spam I get is uncanny in the
way that unusual names from my "contacts" pop up here and
there inside "incoming" spam "From" headers. It's too
frequent of an occurance for it to be happenstance. Have
you any knowledge of how this can be going on when
Norton's is telling me I'm free of trojans and viruses,
etc? I can' find anything in the knowledge bases that
refer to this... but I'm convinced this is not
happenstance. Your's truly, Anita