So I have this Yahoo! e-mail account I don’t use. Ever. And for some reason I’m starting to get "Delivery Status Notification (Failure) " messages telling me that the non-existant messages I sent aren’t going through. They include the original message in it, and it’s spam.
So, my question is… Is someone going into my account and using it to send spam, or what?
The first thing I would suggest is changing your password.
If you keep getting the notification messages, and you don’t ever actually use the account yourself, you could always shut the account down and open another.
(Seconding the call to switch your password)
That also sounds a lot like the klez virus… did you ever give that e-mail addy out to anyone? (I’m kinda laughing at the thought of a spammer getting hit by klez…)
<< C:\DOS C:\DOS\RUN RUN\DOS\RUN >>
Actually, it sounds more like someone is faking your e-mail addr in their spam headers as the source for their spam. Spamming requires bandwidth, and who cares about bounce messages, huh?
You might be able to figure out the real source from the headers, but I can’t think of what you might do off the top of my head. Seems like a waste of time if you can just change accounts…
It’s a virus, I forget which one. More than one is using the “Delivery Status Notification” subject to get you to open the attachment. Most likely nothing is being sent from your account, you’re just receiving a virus from an infected machine that somehow has your email address.
It’s Klez. It sends out messages from random e-mail addresses. If one of the recipients is a bad address, or if it has antivirus software that sends an automatic warning, you get the bounce message. There’s nothing you can do, and unless you open the attachment, you shouldn’t get infected. Just delete the message.
I don’t believe there’s any virus that uses “Delivery Status Notification” as a subject line. This is, however, a virus hoax warning about the subject line as a virus.
Every couple months I’ll receive an email with that header.
Mine were just spam, with an original way to get me to
actually open it. In my case no virus was involved.
Yeah Klez. Just delete the email there really isn’t much you can do with it. I used to get a few a day, but now I get one a week.
It usually comes with an attachment which is a SCR, PIF or other type of file-- these are viral files & don’t open them.
jbird3000: The same thing happened to me at my yahoo email. I got dozens of those “delivery failed” notices every day for about 2 months. I wrote to yahoo, who told me someone was forging my email address; yahoo was not very helpful. The problem has pretty much cleared up.
Ok, I am not sure if this is the same problem in the OP so I will explain.
Two weeks ago I switched free e-mail accounts from Netscape to Yahoo. The main reason was because I was getting 20-30 spams a day and Netscape does not have a spam filter (Bulk mail) or block address option like Yahoo. I sent an e-mail to everyone in my Netscape’s web based address book about the change.
Within a day I got my first spam and it was sent to the Bulk Mail folder. I did open the e-mail but there was no attachment or message. The only text was in the subject line “ONMOUSEOUT”. The thing that got me was that it was sent from a NYS govt agency e-mail address. I did not reply because I wanted to see if I received any follow up e-mails from the same name first. I have not so far.
I have received a few similar to this e-mail (no attachment but different subject lines) from other e-mail addresses. I also received one from a friends e-mail address. I asked my cousin (who is his close friend) if he recieved the e-mail as well but he did not. It was initally passed off as something you might understand coming from him (I’ll explain later)
However, this made me wonder if my friend was infected by a virus. I noticed that if I used the “Full Header” option in the other e-mail addresses it lists my friend’s as the “Return-Path”. Is this the same problem or something different then Klez? He has a Netzero account if it makes any difference.
Also, are there symtoms he should be expiriencing to help conclude the virus he has.
FYI, I have not replied to any of the e-mails (my friend’s included).
As a side note: My friend was hit by a car a few years ago and was seriously injured. He did recover well considering the extent of injuries but his brain function is not what it once was. I need to explain this to him as easily as possible. I am not a computer wiz myself so an easy explanation is helping me too.
Thanks
Many virii propagate by sending themselves out from infected machines. But they often just grab all the email addresses on the machine and randomly stick on in the From: field and one in the To: field. This way it looks like random people are sending you mail, but someone you might know. It’s harder to determine who is infected this way. Even though the mail says it’s from your friend, it may not be.
Yahoo filters out attachments with virii. You never see the attachments, so that explains the empty messages.