Undelivered email to wrong address

The best bet is to scan the system in Safe Mode with both an AV Product then things like Spy Bot S&D and Malware Bytes

http://download.cnet.com/Malwarebytes-Anti-Malware/3000-8022_4-10804572.html?tag=mncol&cdlPid=10878968

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html

Of course this is assuming that your Fiend is running some form of Windows which may be dangerous.

However if they are install the above apps if they are not already installed Update them and the AV Product loaded and then reboot the system into [b]Safe Mode[/b] and run scans on the system.

If it shows anything being deleted rescan with that Application till it's either clean or it's not possible to remove the infection. Then move to another Scanner.

I always start with an AV Product then use Spy Bot and finally Malware Bytes, but that's my Personal Preference.

In severe cases or if Windows isn't involved you may need to use a Rescue Disc like those mentioned here

http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/security/?p=3803&tag=content;leftCol

Col

Spam senders use lists of emails not only for recipients, but also for senders.
Seems your friend's address got abused as a fake sender address, and then undelivered spam comes "bouncing back".

It is actually possible to double check if the spam originated from his ip address.

In the bounced emails, you usually have a copy of the bounced email attached. If you open such an attachment in notepad and look at the delivery headers, then you can see which way the spam was delivered. If the ip addresses listed have nothing in common with your friends email server and/or own public ip, then his address was simply used as a fake sender.

I suppose you meant Unix based or Linux based rescue discs.

My friend is away on holiday for two weeks. I shall talk with him again when he gets back.

What if the emails are not from his computer? Perhap somehow his email address was stolen and emails have been sent out from somewhere else. Then I suppose the only way to fix the problem is to cease to use the current email address and acquire a new one.

On a account that is only opened on a Linux Box. Makes things much safer to look at if nothing else. ;)

If they are not from the computer of your friend there's very little that can be done particularly as Optus got hit recently and had at the very least some of their customers E-Mail Addresses lifted. I'm currently getting Spam on a Account that I don't use but is the Master Optus Address.

The only reference to that Account is from Optus as they are the only ones who send me anything on it, generally things like [b]You have used 80% of your Available Bandwidth[/b] this month when you exceed the limit your Speed will be slowed to whatever. I normally get those type of messages before the 10 of the month. :(

Anyway if you are certain that it's not from that computer it's not really safe to open them on a Windows System as they will likely infect it. Stick a Live Linux Disc in the system and boot off that to do any investigation. ;)

Col

the address sending from could be random in order to hide the real source. I am sure that can be spoofed too.

I know that yahoo mail provides an option of creating some sort of alias to an email account. When needed the alias could be dumped and a new alias to be created. However in my mind that would be the same as creating another email account and we still have to inform every one of the new email address.

I am not too sure what screen name you are referring to. Moreover even you set up an alias I suspect we still can't be sure where it could be stolen from.

Are you forwarding your emails one by one manually?
Of course not. If you have your own domain name, then you're free to define any email addresses in that domain. The provider I use, allows me to define any number of aliases/autoforwards. And I use this to create a specific email address whenever I register on a site where I don't want to give my usual email directly.

Are you saying you are delaing with 60 different addressress?
I'm saying that there are about 60 different addresses you could use, that would get your message delivered into my main email account. But I will still see, which address you sent to.

What do you mean by "all point to my main email account"? Do you mean auto-forward?
You'd typically call it auto-forward if the mail is sent further to another domain. If the "auto-forward" is within the same domain (as in my case) then the term "alias" is used more often.

Perhaps you meant you joined TechRepublic a couple of months ago.
As you can see in my profile, I joined a couple of years ago. And I'm not sure whether i left the user name empty, or entered that same email address in the user name. After all, the address was a "disposable one" so it wouldn't be too a big problem, should it become visible. But later I realized that for user names that look like email addresses, the site hides the domain portion of the name. So I become one out of several techrepublic@... users here. When I started frequenting the site more often, I changed my user name.

How do you read your email with notebook by the way?
In general, I don't like webmail. I want to compose and read emails on my local system (which happens to not be a laptop). So I download the emails from the server to my computer. (and then delete them on the server.)
For me, webmail is a dirty workaround for those cases, when I need to check pending emails on the server because my own computer is off line.

And no it's not dangerous forwarding them on as I don't actually open them. If there where going to do any damage they would do it when they hit the In Box and as there are only a few a month it's not overly time consuming.

I also have a half way decent Spam Filter in place which catches all of these things and it's only when I go looking at what's been caught that I see most of this. I suppose I could just as easily configure the Spam Filter to forward them on but as I'm [b]Inherently Lazy[/b] I just can not be bothered. ;)

Col

Are you using MSN and hotmail? If so, Microsoft has failed to implement or activate the blocking in their system. I think that once you block an un-wanted E-mail, It should be blocked, not even go into your junk mail. Only my opinion! But go figure, you can never delete your information from FaceBook.

P.S. all illegal WEB sites collect and sell your information.
Beware of any videos that want you to download a new codex version. This is a scam. DON'T GO NEAR IT @#@#@#@#
Done it, regret it.
Randy

- It notoriously replaces mentions of email addresses with data from the address book, so that you can't see what was originally in the email itself.
- Unless "hard coded" via registry or policies, it will always try to render html emails.
- By default, the preview pane is on, rendering whatever email happens to be on top of a folder you open.
- Almost every month, MS pushes out updates to their junk filter and flag them as important, so they are included by default. I don't know how these things work themselves, but to the user, the only exposed options for junk mail sorting is blacklisting email address and sender domain, which is a useless way to catch junk mail.

SMTP provides no mechanism for authenticating the Sender of an e-mail, making it easy to impersonate another by [b]forging[/b] the [b]Sender's address[/b].

This is commonly known as [b]spoofing[/b].

There is [b]nothing[/b] that you can do to stop it.

My friend's account is also the primary Optus email account so he can't dumpt it unless he dumps the provider. I have been advising him to use GMail or someting similar instead of getting tied up with one's ISP.

Is your SPAM similar to what my friend has got.