For the past two or three weeks I’ve been getting a rash of virus-infected spam. (My spamblocker sequestors unauthorised e-mails and alerts me with an icon if it contains a virus.) These are from ix.netcom.com, which is my e-mail domain, and the sender is ‘administrator’, ‘support’, ‘webmaster’, etc. They come in bunches. For example, I’ve just received three at once. I’ve received as many as 15 at once.
Obviously if my ‘account is closed’ I would not be receiving e-mail to it. And I kind of have a hunch that my ISP would not be sending me a virus. These spam are deleted and reported as spam without opening.
Can’t give yo a direct answer to your question but I find that if I ‘retire’ an email address that is attracting spam for a while, the spammers get tired of it and leave it alone.
Are you using a “big” ISP (ie SBC, Roadrunner, AOL etc, also, where is your mail server (hotmail, gmail etc…) I ask this, becuase workplace’s website is hosted locally and I have an email account through them. Every once in a while I’ll get tons and tons of spam (normally I get less then one per week), upon looking into it, it’ll usually turn out that they’re working on the servers and have spamassasin (or whatever they use) turned off so all the garbage is getting through.
That’s Mytob. It a rapidly mutating virus and usually appears to some from some authority at your e-mail domain. Often it’s signed “The <domain> Support Team.”
The issue is that Mytob mutates almost daily. New versions sneak through virus checkers in the hours between its introduction and when an updated antivirus is put on the gateway. There’s not much you can do other than be smart and never click on an attachment unless you know what it is.
Probably the emails originate from a machine infected with the very virus you are being sent. Perhaps a friend has recently had their machine infected and your address was found as the virus scanned their HD. Hopefully the infected person will run a virus scanner sometime soon and the avalanche may stop.