I’ve been getting repeated bounce messages in the last few days for emails I did not send. They come from Google, because they were attempts to send to (my username)@google.com, which I’d never do.
I have 2FA on for the web interface for my email, and I haven’t seen any signs of sending attempts on my end. My research indicates this is probably spoofing at work, and not some kind of breach on my end, but does anyone have other opinions or things to try?
Little known fact: the “From” address is (like almost everything else in email) entirely honor-system, insecure, and trivially spoofed.
Possible scenario: a spammer sends a spam dump using your randomly selected email address as the “From” address. Since this is also a cheap and lazy spammer, a lot of the intended victim email addresses are invalid. The receiving email servers, running software written last millennium, assumes (a) the From address is sincere, and (b) you would like to know about the assortment of failures and rejections because you really want “your” emails to get through.
Sometimes this tactic is used in conjunction with particularly vile and egregious email content to slander the spoofed sender, a thing called a “Joe job”.
To summarize: someone sent a lot of emails naming you as the source, which doesn’t require anything from you or your email provider. Only the ability to put in the email addess <you>@gmail.com into the message stream submitting the email to a sending email server.
I’ve gotten two or three of those.
I had 11 of them today - also with the google.com domain. Nice to know I’m not alone.
Happened to my sister a few years ago, so many that her ISP blocked her email or somesuch. Took a few goes to get them to understand what was happening.