Emails being bounced that I did not send

[Merryterry]

I have loads of emails being bounced that I did not send in the first
place. they have a name I do not know in front of the @myaddress.co.uk
Do I have a Trojan?

My machine has had a new hard disk fitted by PC World a couple of
weeks ago and a new clean installation of XP Home.

I downloaded Mcafee Security suite the moment I logged on to the net.
Am loading updates and I have done several scans with Mcafee, Spybot,
Trend since and, apart from unwanted cookies, nothing untoward.

I thought McAfee was supposed to block trojans?

Do I have a trojan and how do I find it and get rid of it?

 

[Richard in AZ]

I have loads of emails being bounced that I did not send in the first
place. they have a name I do not know in front of the @myaddress.co.uk
Do I have a Trojan?

My machine has had a new hard disk fitted by PC World a couple of
weeks ago and a new clean installation of XP Home.

I downloaded Mcafee Security suite the moment I logged on to the net.
Am loading updates and I have done several scans with Mcafee, Spybot,
Trend since and, apart from unwanted cookies, nothing untoward.

I thought McAfee was supposed to block trojans?

Do I have a trojan and how do I find it and get rid of it?

Most likely nothing is wrong with your machine.
Some spammer is spoofing your address (which they can get easy enough) as the return address.
Hence all of the bounced mail is coming back to you, even though you did not send it.
If you have run your antivirus and antispyware software and are clean, you just have to wait out
this problem.
It will eventually go away.

Lets all find these spammers and chop off their fingers. That would slow them down a little.

 

[Richard in AZ]

I have loads of emails being bounced that I did not send in the first
place. they have a name I do not know in front of the @myaddress.co.uk
Do I have a Trojan?

My machine has had a new hard disk fitted by PC World a couple of
weeks ago and a new clean installation of XP Home.

I downloaded Mcafee Security suite the moment I logged on to the net.
Am loading updates and I have done several scans with Mcafee, Spybot,
Trend since and, apart from unwanted cookies, nothing untoward.

I thought McAfee was supposed to block trojans?

Do I have a trojan and how do I find it and get rid of it?

PS: if the email address listed at the top of this message is your real address, that is why the
spammers have your address to use as a return address to spoof.

 

[Enkidu]

I have loads of emails being bounced that I did not send in the first
place. they have a name I do not know in front of the @myaddress.co.uk
Do I have a Trojan?

My machine has had a new hard disk fitted by PC World a couple of
weeks ago and a new clean installation of XP Home.

I downloaded Mcafee Security suite the moment I logged on to the net.
Am loading updates and I have done several scans with Mcafee, Spybot,
Trend since and, apart from unwanted cookies, nothing untoward.

I thought McAfee was supposed to block trojans?

Do I have a trojan and how do I find it and get rid of it?

What "Richard in AZ" said.

If you are interested, it goes like this (in many cases):

1) You send an email to Granny. Granny now has your email address on her
machine.

2) Granny gets a virus. The virus sends her address book to a spammer or
virus writer. Maybe Granny doesn't get a virus. Maybe she merely mails
the latest Internet joke to twenty people. Those twenty people also now
have your email address. Any one of them could get a virus.

3) The spammer or virus writer send out millions of emails, faking the
sender address as your address. It also fakes some other headers,
including perhaps the 'envelope sender' address.

4) The recipients of the spam bounce them to the sender address and
maybe the envelope sender.

5) You get them in your email mailbox.

You can have a perfectly secure machine, with no viruses, trojans or
other malware and still end up getting bounce emails.

Cheers,

Cliff