I keep getting a very suspicious email. It has the subject line:
Mail delivery failed: returning message to sender
**Inside it gives an email address I’ve never heard of, and says my message to that address can’t be delivered.
Here are some of the other parts of this weird email:**
This message was created automatically by mail delivery software (Exim).
A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its
recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:
This is a different address in each email. But it is never an address I have sent email to.
This message has been rejected because it has
an apparently executable attachment HEIGHT.bat
This is a virus prevention measure.
If you meant to send this file then please
package it up as a zip file and resend it.
------ This is a copy of the message, including all the headers. ------
------ The body of the message is 131847 characters long; only the first
------ 8192 or so are included here.
Subject: Your password
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: multipart/alternative;
boundary=S0M1X8u4BsMI0Af9PSX2b999vp917eg8
Did you get this at work (or school, or…)? If you have a standalone mail account rather than a local “post office”, you probably would not get a message like this.
If it’s at work, notify someone in networking. If it’s at home, delete it. At best, it isn’t doing you any good. At worst it’s probably a virus.
Do you have anti-virus software? If so, what does it say?
OK, you do know you should never open a file ending in .bat, .exe, or .vb anything unless you know exactly who sent it to you and why, right? Paranoid soul that I am, I’d recommend that even if you do receive such a file from someone you know and who you are expecting it from, call them to confirm. I did a quick search on Google and it looks like this is a virus. Hopefully some more knowledgeable person will come along soon with the appropriate link.
Short term advice, delete this e-mail immediately and do not forward it to anyone.
I get stuff like this every once in a while. My guess is that this is what is happening.
A virus sends an e-mail with your e-mail address in the “From” and (lesser known) “Reply to” fields. (Sneaky bastards can do that now. This is not a sign that you are infected with a virus.)
The recipient’s computer is protected by virus/firewall (depending, largely, on the network the recipient is on) protection that scans the message, detects the virus, deletes the e-mail, and sends the failure message to you (because, as you’ll remember, it’s your e-mail address in the “reply to” field).
KKBattousai - you may be right. The thing I didn’t make clear is, I don’t see executable file in this email to click on. That’s what confused me. There are a few hyperlinks, but they all appear to be email addresses. Possibly if I clicked on one of those, it would trigger an executable program?
I’m getting this in my private email account, at home. Normally I would just delete it, but since I’ve gotten it several times, I want to be sure what’s going on.
Whatever its source, its intentions are nefarious. Speaking as a professional issuer of passwords, there’s no reason to include a batch file or an audio/midi file with a password.
The gobbledygood is the MIME data representing “height.bat” - MIME is a standardized process that converts file attachments into text for transport through email systems.
Do you have antivirus software on the computer, and is it configured to check emails? Is it up to date?
If all seems well on your end, and you have a real ISP (ie: not AOL or MSN) you might want to contact them and describe this problem to them. As KKB mentioned, someone may be “spoofing” your email account, and they may be willing to take over investigation of the culprit as their name’s on each piece of email also, and most reputable ISPs will do what they can to stop this sort of thing.
Last but not least, you might want to change the password on your email, just in case someone else is accessing it.