Return To Sender

jbongi · Joined: Apr 24, 2004 Posts: 1

A few days ago I started receiving a bunch of returned emails of which I sent none. I'm running Norton Antivirus 2004 and have carefully quarantined everything that Norton told me to and keep away from any emails that have attachments from people I don't know. I ran a full scan with Norton and it found absolutely nothing. My virus definitions are up to date, so what do I do now?

gregofvt · Joined: Jun 23, 2003 Posts: 3700

The first thing I would try is an online virus scan. All the major manufacturers have one on their website. Also try rebooting into safe mode and run a full manual scan. Turn off system restore first, as its backups can contain viruses that won't be picked up on a regular scan. If you have anything in NAV's quarantine, delete it.

All this said, it is quite possible that your system is clean if you have no other symptoms. Many newer viruses will send themselves out with a random address from the address book in the "from" field. Threfore it is possible that someone that has you in their address book is infected and their virus is just using your address as the fake sender. Confused yet :rolleyes:

GREG

madjack53 · Joined: Aug 22, 2003 Posts: 1341

:ph34r: ...welcome to the forums jbongi, greg has you started in the right direction. It is possible there is nothing wrong with your system, run your scans as suggested also be sure and get Adaware and Spybot, update and run them also. If all comes up clean you can also try hi-jack this, save the log and then post it here in the correct forum for further instructions and once again welcome
madjack B)

Die Hard · Joined: Apr 05, 2003 Posts: 2196

jbongi , hi :)

There´s nothing wrong with your security nor anything else in your system.

All spammers use spoofed e-mail addys. (That´s obvious, because else they would be easily caught )

Someone is using your addy as the "spoofed" one. And the reciever either 1). hasn´t a valid e-mail addy or 2) the original reciepent uses any kind of spamfilter that bounces all mails from spammers. In either case, the mails will be returned to you as your address is in the "From" field.

There are CD:s on sale on the net with e-mail addresses. I guess the programs spammers use pick both the "From"-line and the "To"-line randomly from the same source.

I have about 40-50 spam-mails a day myself and many (a 3:d) are forwarded mails.

I suggest you get yourself a spamfilter like Mailwasher It´s free and it´s easy to install and configure. All you have to do is to connect it to your e-mail (add user and pw) and add your preferences for deletion/bouncing . Then the spams will be bounced/deleted on the server. Hence, you are more secure against being infected with viruses, too.

regards

Die Hard Smile