My email address has been stolen/hacked/'botted

[brewerpaul]

It seems that someone is using my normal email address to send SPAM. I keep getting emails fromthe Mailer Daemon saying that one of my emails is not deliverable, and they're not emails that I ever sent.

Short of changing my email address, how can I stop this?
Malware screen?
Antivirus?
I'm planning on running both of those at least, as soon as I have time. Any other recommendations appreciated.
I do have antispam and antivirus protection activated on all computers.

[fearfaoin]

It's likely that nothing is happening on your side at all.
The spammer is probably spoofing the email he's sending
with your address and the mailer daemon doesn't realize
that you're not really the one sending them.

http://forum.spamcop.net/forums/lofiver ... t7186.html

[Innocent Bystander]

The "undeliverable" email you didn't send is a common one.

On the other hand accounts do get hacked. One of my friends on hotmail got hacked last week. Not only did it spam her address list - in her name, too! - it WIPED her addresslist, and posted an "out-of-office" reply so that anyone telling her she'd been hacked was turned away. That was only if you replied to the orginal spam, though. If you sent a new message, it got delivered. I was the only one who twigged. She's cleared out her account, changed her password and contacted the administrators to sort it out. She has other email accounts, so she's just leaving that one alone for the time being.

[The Weekenders]

FWIW, I didn't get an email from you and certainly mine is on the list here....I'll let you know if I do.

[Steamwalker]

So I should ignore these e-mails from you about receiving a free whistle every month for the next 12 months?

[brewerpaul]

So I should ignore these e-mails from you about receiving a free whistle every month for the next 12 months?

Nice try...

[mukade]

It sounds like email spoofing.

Somebody who has you in their address book has been infected.
The infected computer is sending out emails using your address.

Mukade

[swizzlestick]

Yep, someone is spoofing your address. (I deal with this a lot at work.)

Some spammer has stolen your address from someone's address book, or found your address on a web page or just decided to use it at random. The point is to make the email look like it's from someone real.

Unfortunately, there is not a lot you can do about it at this stage of Internet development. (The next version of network addressing, IPv6, is supposed to help with this. We will see.) Changing your email address would be an overreaction. Plus any new address is still vulnerable to copy.

There is a chance that your computer has been compromised, but if you keep your security patches up to date, do anti-virus scanning and keep an independent firewall between you and the Internet, that's not likely. Plus if someone has taken over your computer, they probably would be smart enough to not draw attention to the fact.

[Charlene]

I had a spate of this on Hotmail a couple of weeks ago - like over 100 messages saying they were undeliverable every time I checked my mail! I just checked them all and used the "report as SPAM" option at the top of the page, and in a few days they quit coming.