Over the weekend I, got five emails saying that the person I had written was out of the office, or that there was some sort of spam block service and I should register with them to get the email through. Since I recognized none of the addresses and some had that link, I figured them for phishing and deleted them. Today I got a bounce error message from YahooGroups with a quoted message that had somebody whose name I don’t recognize posting as me, spamming some list I’m not on. For the record, I do not have the power to make a penis larger, except in the usual sense that any woman can. So now I think I have a problem, but I’m unsure, because I haven’t seen “me” post on any list I’m actually on.
Any idea on what’s going on, and whether I should be concerned, and if so, what I can do? This is an email for my small business and I really don’t want it blocked as spam.
Often, this might just mean that your address is on someone else’s contact list and that person got hacked; malware on their computer could be masquerading as you and sending out emails.
If you think it might be your own computer doing this, run a malware check and then change your password.
If you have control over your small business’s email servers (or can talk to the administrator), make sure SPF and/or DomainKeys are turned on for a little extra protection.
Beyond that, cross your fingers and hope for the best. Email was designed for a bygone era and sometimes you just have to live with its flaws.
Do you use an actual email client, like Outlook, or do you use webmail?
In either case, finding spam in your “sent mail” folder would be proof positive that your account had been hacked, rather than someone merely impersonating you as Reply suggested. Absence of spam in your “sent mail” folder, would not necessarily mean you were in the clear though.
Check the headers of the email in question and see EXACTLY where it is coming from. If it’s supposed to be Yahoo and it’s from Russia with love, that is called a fake header. That is, trace the IP’s in the header using “Who is” or some other client. Your problem seems like a slight variation of what has been posted about many times here. Yahoo gets hacked. People start sending mail to your addresses as you. All I’ve ever seen is ads, not malware. If this is your business mail, it could be trouble as the hackers don’t stop using the addresses until they are out of your address book. They have stopped when the address book is empty. Change you password of course. Then you might try removing all the addresses for a few days and see if that helps. That might trigger an end. I don’t know because the people I have had with the problem simply moved to Gmail or whatever.
I don’t know how they do it, but your email address can be spoofed. I used to keep getting emails from a friend of mine in NZ, but they weren’t from her - it got rather distressing during the earthquakes as I was anxious to hear from her only to find I was getting stupid links to whatever (my friend was and is fine btw)