I received an email in my bulk mail folder. The sender was my email address?

Question

I received an email in my bulk mail folder. The sender was my email address?

Answer 1

The "From" field in a message will show whatever the program that sent the e-mail was instructed to use. That's right. I can set up my Outlook right now to send messages saying they are coming from [e-mail], and that's what will show to the recipient. I can write a virus that will scour your address book, then randomly use those addresses as the "From" field, and mail copies of itself to everyone. None of those people sent the message, but the virus crafted a message that says they did... This is a pain, because it makes even more difficult to track the source of infection. Ted had Rob, Mary and Peter in his address book. Ted's computer is the one infected, but the messages the virus sent say they are coming from Rob, Mary and Peter... who get angry e-mails from everyone telling them to clean their $#!## computer, lol. Spam sending programs can do the same thing: they buy or download a list of e-mails, then randomly use them as both Sender and Receiver.



So, to make a long story short: you did not send yourself a message, and nobody has a hold of your e-mail password, your e-mail address was used by a spammer as the "Sender" in a spam mailing, which you also received.

Answer 2

Yeah, I've had the same problem for a couple days too and I just realized it late last night. Who knows what I've missed. I went ahead and opened a Gmail account and have begun changing accounts. I can't believe Yahoo is hiding their pathetic inaptitude. I'm angry as it is, but if I were a Plus subscriber, I would be nuclear right now. I suggest you switch to Gmail and hit Yahoo where it hurts. That's the only way to prevent customer abuse like this.

Answer 3

What has happened is that we generally don't put our own address in as a contact. Yahoo doesn't recognize and gets put in spam. Now as to who sent there are many spyware and adware that attach to the name and resend hoping to get opened up. So be carefull not to open strange email.

Answer 4

Change your password and use a strong password which contains upper and lower case letters and some numbers........



I believe that what you received was a forged email.......it LOOKED LIKE IT CAME FROM YOU so your spam filter wouldn't quarantine it. This is a common and low tech trick to get the email into your inbox.



Change your password anyway.

Answer 5

Alright,



1. Do Multiple Virus/Spyware Scans on your PC.

2. Change Your Password (include letters, words, and or numbers.

3. If all fails, make a new account.

Answer 6

you don't stop it and they don't have a hold of your email address. anyone who says otherwise doesn't know wht they're talking about. nobody has your password or any of your informaion. it's very easy to make the email show up as being from whoever i want. just delete the message and ignore it. nothing to worry about.

Answer 7

It could be a bot. Like when you open emails that turn out to be junk but you don't know it till you open it. That could be one way. Or you could have a virus on the computer. I would try changing your email's password. If that does not work..get a new account..still doesn't work..clean the computer and get antivirus on your computer.

Answer 8

The absolutely free reverse email lookup sites generally provide false information, they just want your email to send you spam. To get real information, money will have to be paid.



Also, stay away from shady reverse email lookup sites, most likely you won't get any information after you make the payment. Not to mention you won't get a report and you won't get an answer if you try to call for a refund. Stick with a reputable reverse phone lookup site like http://www.emailtracer.org that has been around since 1997.

Answer 9

You can't. As you use the web and your email gets entered into forms and such, web crawlers and spiders find it and it gets on the spammers and phishers radar. Just use your spam blocker to block it and DO NOT open or reply to any of them. Just delete them.

Answer 10

If you remember when you setup your email client you were able to have your name show up any way you liked? Well entering the "reply-to" email address is a similar field which is optional to the sender... in other words, anything can be put there.



There is a proper way to read SPAM mail... this is done by viewing "full header" information. If you are using Yahoo you can turn on "full headers" by clicking on OPTIONS in the upper right of your screen when in the email page... then going into General Preferences > Messages > show all headers on incoming messages >> save



Now you will see all of the gobbledygook above the message body... stuff like x-originating ip and received by ip etc... etc...

Some of this can also be faked or "spoofed". However it is much harder to spoof this information.



If you are wanting to report spam you should always forward it to the authorities with the full header information. Sometimes you will have to manually copy and paste in that info.



You can forward it to the Federal Trade Commission.. they handle spam, phishing, internet fraud, etc... and their email address is [e-mail]

If there is a valid yahoo address sent to

[e-mail]

or [e-mail]

[e-mail]

etc...



If you know how to perform a WHOIS lookup on IP addresses you can forward the email also to the ISP where it is truly originating from.



The main thing to remember is to NEVER click on the links in the email. !!!



If you hover your mouse over the links or images you will probably notice that the ACTUAL link it will be going to is quite different than you expected.



If you are interested in playing a really cute game from Carnegie Mellon University that will teach you all about Phishing check out this link:

http://cups.cs.cmu.edu/antiphishing_phil/quiz/index.html



I strongly urge you to invest in a proper security suite from a reliable vendor like McAfee which will protect you from accidental clicks and malicious attacks.



Good Luck!

Answer 11

May be your friends got infected by virus; may be you got infected.



You should do a full scan on your machine.



If it is in yahoo, you can do little, except delete that mail.



You may visit http://www.infosec.gov.hk for some information in handling e-mails.

Answer 12

someone hacked ur email... change ur password and then go from there

Answer 13

If you received email from yourself....you need to do a thorough virus check.

Answer 14

The same thing happened to me! It freaked me out! I reported it to Yahoo, and they said they were aware of the problem and not to worry about it. But don't you feel violated? They assured me that my e-mail account wasn't being used to send spam.

Answer 15

that happened to me recently as well and I have saved the email and have been planning on following up... I think it is distrubing... so I don't have an answer but a shared concern...

Answer 16

Change you email address.And stop with the smokes!

Answer 17

Stop sending yourself emails. If your that bored you can email me if you want LMAO

Answer 18

Try changing your password. if that doesnt help then im not sure..

Answer 19

create a new account

Answer 20

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