unknown e-mail recipient

K

Kelly

My Outlook is sending e-mails to addresses that I do not
know. The e-mails do not show up in my outbox or sent
box, but I find out about them when the e-mail is
returned for some reason. This is happening on an almost
daily basis.
 
G

Gordon

Kelly said:
My Outlook is sending e-mails to addresses that I do not
know. The e-mails do not show up in my outbox or sent
box, but I find out about them when the e-mail is
returned for some reason. This is happening on an almost
daily basis.
Click to expand...

Outlook is not sending anything. These emails are bounces caused by an
infected machine that is spoofing the "reply-to" address as your email
address.
They will stop when the person who owns the machine realises that they are
infected.

Just delete them.
 
B

Brian Tillman

Gordon said:
Outlook is not sending anything. These emails are bounces caused by an
infected machine that is spoofing the "reply-to" address as your email
address.
Click to expand...

Ah, no. It's spoofing the sender address.
 
G

Gordon

Kelly cogitated deeply and scribbled thusly:
So what is a spoof, and how does it get my address?


bounces caused by an


address as your email
Click to expand...

It can get your address from ANY document or file on the computer -
maybe a newsgroup post, or an email that has been forwarded many times,
even from a website. Some viruses now randomly make up addresses, just
using the part after the "@" as a start - I've had spoof emails to
non-existing addresses on my domain that I KNOW have not been used.
 
B

Brian Tillman

Kelly said:
So what is a spoof, and how does it get my address?
Click to expand...

As Gordon says, but one frequent way is that a virus has infected a computer
where your name is in the address book. The virus then sends itself to
other addresses in the address book, choosing an address at random for the
sender. The message then appears to come from that sender.
 
G

Gordon

Brian Tillman cogitated deeply and scribbled thusly:
As Gordon says, but one frequent way is that a virus has infected a computer
where your name is in the address book. The virus then sends itself to
other addresses in the address book, choosing an address at random for the
sender. The message then appears to come from that sender.
Click to expand...

the problem appears to be that recent viruses use email addresses from
ANYWHERE on the PC, not just the addressbook! They also seem to be
constructing addresses from unrelated words - I have had several spoof
emails sent to addresses at my domain that never existed, will never
exist, and have never ever been used anywhere!
 
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