Email in box

[RichardCoeurdeLion]

Suddenly numerous messages are arriving in my in box.

According to the screen I sent them to myself.

I've deleted them all, unopened.

What's all that about?

[Colinm]

are you feeling lonely, or desperate, in need of friendship?

[RichardCoeurdeLion]

Not at all

[keddyboy]

Bedtime story perhaps???

[gerryh]

Suddenly numerous messages are arriving in my in box.

According to the screen I sent them to myself.

I've deleted them all, unopened.

What's all that about?

The spammers are starting to forge the from address to look like it came from a legitimate source. In this case they used your email address.

Don't worry about it it is becoming increasingly common. Just delete them.

Cheers
Gerry

[RichardCoeurdeLion]

Thanks team

The subjects looked dubious.

Something about

Niagra

Increasing the size of my manhood . (I've never liked hoods... messes up my hairstyle)

A nice lady from Russia who wants to meet me. Not interested, perfectly happy with current Mrs Rick

[RichardCoeurdeLion]

Forgot to say.

Can these low lifes send emails to other people,that look like they came from me.

That wouldn't be very good me thinks

[gerryh]

Yes, of course they can.
Haven't you ever had an email allegedly from Nationwide, Citibank, Paypal etc etc all of which are phishing emails?

Cheers
Gerry

[RichardCoeurdeLion]

So someone could send an offensive or theatening email to someone else, porporting to come from me. The receiver goes to the authorities and complains. Next thing I know I'm geting me collar felt

Blimey o Rieley

[gerryh]

Don't panic Rick. If you view the headers of an email you can see exactly who sent it. Viewing an email in normal mode just shows the aledged sender.
Cheers
Gerry

[RichardCoeurdeLion]

And can these bar stewards acess my inbox. Should I change my password?

I'm not panicing Capt Mainwaring.

Just a bit brassed off.

[gerryh]

No they don't have access to your inbox.
They can harvest valid email addresses from many places.
Or even guess your email address particularly if it something like rick@xxxx or in my case gerry@xxxx.
Don't panic just poor yourself another glass of wine and ignore them.

Cheers
Gerry

[RichardCoeurdeLion]

I see

They just send to ;

[email protected]
[email protected]
[email protected]

and see what happens

What's the point of it all?

[gerryh]

That's the way they do it. they create lots of email addresses, some are real email addresses.
Most of the spammers hope you will buy their Viagra, extension products etc. Some, the phishing ones, hope you will supply them with your bank account details, they then empty your bank account.
Others have attachments to the email that they hope you will open. The software that then gets installed on your machine can do various things, all nasty, like install a key logger that records and sends them all your key presses like bank account details.
Some turn your machine into one that sends more of these spam messages to other machine.
There are many other nasties as well.

Cheers
Gerry

[RichardCoeurdeLion]

How can having someones bank account details enable you to empty their account?

Every time you write a cheque, you reveal this.

Or once they have got inside your computer, can they use your passwords etc to make transfers as if they were you. If so there's a good case for Not registering for internet banking.

Rick

[Grouser]

Rick it's the keylogger Gerry mentions above. This will log the keys you press to enter your passwords etc. Banks now try to get round this weakness by issuing ccustomers with an electronic gizmo that generates one use passwords. A new one every time you log in to their secure site.

[smash]

seems like anonymous emails to me. its pretty easy to pull off. theres 99,9% chance no one has logged on into your email account. now i'd suggest you delete them and forget about them. the way people send them(and the way i used to do it when i was probably 12) is this:

mail servers request login and password to download an email before they let you download your emails(if you are using outlook or thunderbird for example) or show them in your web browser if you are using a web client(yahoo, hotmail, gmail etc). unfortunately the same servers do not request login to sent a message. so there are many applications that allow you to sent an email from another persons account without logging in. theres even a protocol in windows that you could use(the one i used t use to mess up with my friends and freak them out) called telnet. just a few lines to put in and you are good to go. the bad thing about it that those sorts of programs and protocols allow anyone to send emails from anyones account to anyones account. so unless you are an owner of a big swiss bank or a major drug dealer you shouldnt worry too much.

[Mowser]

Copy the headers and email to the domain name. Cheapdomains.co.uk seems to be a favourite.

[alexander1]

Mowser - can you explain this in a bit more detail please? I too have received mail from myself and not happy about it. I thought it was unsafe to go into Spam e:mails? Many thanks.

[Mowser]

I've a yahoo email address. Any time I get an email from myself, I "right click" the name and at the bottom of the list it says "View full headers". You can then see either where it came from, or possibly the domain name. For me it shows the domain name of cheapdomains.co.uk I emailed them but am still awaiting a reply. Now I simply forward it to them. Let THEM deal with it.