Outlook 2007 sending spam email with my mail

[John Monahan]

It looks like Outlook is sending multiple spam e-mails to people I do not
know when I send out an a-mail.

I'm guessing this is the case because I am getting 10-20 a-mails a day
saying that unknown addressees I do not recognize cannot accept my mail.
Already my service provider sent a warning and forced me to change from the
"normal" SMTP port to the 587 one. Three questions....

How can I be sure I am attaching spam to my outgoing e-mails. i.e.. the spam
e-mails I receive are in fact true.
How could I see/get to the spam e-mail list
How can I cleanup the problem. I use AVG it detects nothing.

 

[Gordon]

It looks like Outlook is sending multiple spam e-mails to people I do not
know when I send out an a-mail.

I'm guessing this is the case because I am getting 10-20 a-mails a day
saying that unknown addressees I do not recognize cannot accept my mail.
Already my service provider sent a warning and forced me to change from
the "normal" SMTP port to the 587 one. Three questions....

How can I be sure I am attaching spam to my outgoing e-mails. i.e.. the
spam e-mails I receive are in fact true.
How could I see/get to the spam e-mail list
How can I cleanup the problem. I use AVG it detects nothing.

It's highly probable that someone else, who has your email address on their
computer, has a virus. If that's so, nothing you can do about it. They'll
reduce and disappear with time...

 

[Peter Durkee]

It's highly probable that someone else, who has your email address on
their computer, has a virus. If that's so, nothing you can do about it.
They'll reduce and disappear with time...

Exactly, and if it *was* your computer that was sending the spam messages,
the odds are they wouldn't contain your return address because that would
make it easy to track down the source, and you wouldn't be getting those
bounces.
-Peter

 

[John Monahan]

That's what I thought too but I had one person tell me that he could not
receive my e-mail because some sever along the route trapped my e-mail
address as a spam site. Also Comcast won't let me use the normal SMTP port
but this 587 one to block "my spam" going out.

Is there anyway to see if "attached" other e-mail addresses are included in
a sent e-mail other than looking at it on a friends computer where it
appears clean.

 

[Peter Durkee]

It's possible that your machine is infected, and sending out spam as part of
a botnet, but the bounces you're getting back are probably not an indication
of that, and I don't think that the real email you're sending to people has
any part in that process. The fact that Comcast has you using an alternate
port for SMTP does indicate that maybe your machine is spamming and they are
blocking port 25 from you, knowing that you can switch Outlook to a
different port, but the botnet software won't be able to make that change.

What I'm saying is don't worry about the email you're sending through
Outlook. Focus instead on scanning your machine with whatever tools you have
to make sure it's not spamming in the background.

-Peter

 

[John Monahan]

Thanks Peter, feel much better with that!
John

It's possible that your machine is infected, and sending out spam as part
of a botnet, but the bounces you're getting back are probably not an
indication of that, and I don't think that the real email you're sending
to people has any part in that process. The fact that Comcast has you
using an alternate port for SMTP does indicate that maybe your machine is
spamming and they are blocking port 25 from you, knowing that you can
switch Outlook to a different port, but the botnet software won't be able
to make that change.

What I'm saying is don't worry about the email you're sending through
Outlook. Focus instead on scanning your machine with whatever tools you
have to make sure it's not spamming in the background.

-Peter

 

[Gordon]

The fact that Comcast has you using an alternate port for SMTP does
indicate that maybe your machine is spamming and they are blocking port 25
from you,

Comcast is in the process of migrating their users from Port 25 as a matter
of course....