It wasn't me!

[unfeathered]

Sincerest apologies to those of you who got spammed by a stoopid email apparently sent from me this afternoon - which presumably is any of you I've ever emailed. Ooops!

Andy has gone over my computer and can't find anything else odd, and has re-installed virus checkers etc. so hopefully this won't happen again. If it does, I guess I'll have to close down that account and get a new one, which would be a bit of a bother since I've got about 20 RP journals and various other things all attached to that address... *sigh*

Comments

[omphalos.livejournal.com]

Just so you know, it's not necessarily your machine at fault at all. This type of virus usually goes through the victim's address book and mass-mails spam out while pretending to come from a randomly chosen address from within that address book. In other words, someone who has your email in their Outlook (or whatever) address book is most likely the owner of the source machine, and not you.

Just to make sure, however, swap over to gmail or some other webmail resource rather than using pop3 mail via email clients. Its so much safer and in multiple ways. :) (If you already use webmail, and the suspect mails are claiming to be coming from your webmail address, then it's definitely not your machine at fault.)

[unfeathered]

Huh. It is a gmail address that was affected. So... there's absolutely nothing I can do then?

[omphalos.livejournal.com]

Unless you have your gmail set up to download to your machine via a pop3 mail client such as Outlook, then it's unlikely your computer is the source of the problem.

Just to make absolutely sure, download, update and run the *free* versions of these two malware detectors: Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and Superantispyware. They are both very good and tend to spot things other detectors don't.

They may well pick up things that have nothing to do with this particular worm too!

[unfeathered]

Thanks, I'll get onto that at the weekend/when I've caught up on my sleep enough to get my head round stuff. Thanks for all your advice on this! :-)

[unfeathered]

Also, I got several delivery status notifications from emails that were obviously sent to noreply addresses (and my old blueyonder address), so wouldn't that mean the mails were actually coming from my address?

Well, except that I obviously haven't got any record of them being sent.

I don't know. I'm out of my depth here!

[omphalos.livejournal.com]

No, it wouldn't because the mailer worm is spoofing your address in the 'from' field, and the auto-responses are replying to the spoofed address. It does mean, however, that whoever does have the worm has your old address as well as your new one.

It's vaguely possible that you have got the worm, and it's using your old Outlook address book from your blueyonder days, but if so, unless you're very unlucky, those two anti-malware links should sort you out. It's much more likely it's someone else though.

If you'd like advice on how to turn your computer into Fort Knox, let me know. It does impact on your web enjoyment, however. Some consider the easy enjoyment worth the risk. :)

[baffledking.livejournal.com]

<3<3

[aeron-lanart.livejournal.com]

Didn't think it was you, but I'm glad you found out about it sooner rather than later. I hate it when that sort of thing happens.

[stackcats.livejournal.com]

I did wonder! Hopefully your computer is feeling well again now XD