sender of email using my email address

[Grant]

How can someone else use my own personal email address to send me bulk mail.
I thought that's why we had passwords, so that nobody else could access our
account.

 

[Roady [MVP]]

Your account doesn't need to be accessed for that. Passwords are for
collecting mail and to "ask" your ISP to send a message for you. Passwords
are not used to verify if an address actually belongs to you.

Sadly, the mail protocol, as it stands today, basically allows you to put
any address in the "From" field and send it via another mail server (usually
an open relay server) without verification. However, basic junk mail filters
will likely pick that up especially when sent in bulk.

You can read up on the various methods being used here;
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E-mail_spam

 

[splunk]

Same problem. Only some of these spammers are saying they are an msn offer.
Click on unsubscribe and I got sent to a viagara site. Tried to find a
contact e-mail in microsoft electronic jungle to fwd these e-mails to so they
could see for themselves what the latest spam is up to; but can't find my way
through to the right contact.
I am getting up to 10 of these a day. Sending to junk, but can't block
sender as I am the sender. If I do get a legitimate returned e-mail or
whatever I have blocked my own address.
Almost to point where I will have to change my work e-mail address so the
spammers will at least have to start again.