Spam emails being sent from my email?

[Jenny Walker]

Hey guys, I need your advice on this. I've noticed when checking my mailbox that I've gotten several spam emails that appear to have been sent from my account. They seem to have been sent from my email address, but the weird thing is that they are addressed from "me" instead of using my name, which is what normally shows when I send an email to myself. Has someone been using my email account to send spam?

[userdan]

You have nothing to worry about, it's just spammers spoofing your email address. All they're doing is putting your email address in whatever mailing script they use so that it looks like it came from you, but they never even went near your account. Just mark it as spam and dump it, you'll be fine. ;)

[Amelia]

To prevent this from happening you should set a SPF record for you domain. Sender Policy Framework (SPF) records allow domain owners to specify which hosts are permitted to send email on behalf of their domains.

Your hosting company will generally do this for you upon request.

[gazzie]

Definitely get an SPF record for your domain. I know a guy who got listed in the Spamhaus blacklist simply because someone was hijacking his domain. He was able to get de-listed easily enough because he had proof that he wasn't sending out those spam emails, but you know what they say about an ounce of prevention and a pound of cure...

[JeremyWJ]

Originally Posted by Jenny Walker

Hey guys, I need your advice on this. I've noticed when checking my mailbox that I've gotten several spam emails that appear to have been sent from my account. They seem to have been sent from my email address, but the weird thing is that they are addressed from "me" instead of using my name, which is what normally shows when I send an email to myself. Has someone been using my email account to send spam?

Anyone can write a simple script to send email that appears to come from anyone's address they wish. Its called spoofing as one user mentioned earlier.

Follow their suggestions they have already made but understand that this does not mean your account has been hacked.

[bluetrance05]

I think spammers use email collector programs to search email addresses in the web. If you have an email service that has a filtering tool, use it against spam mails and do not ever reply to them. If you wanna avoid 99% of spam emails, use a server side spam filtering services or change your email address when needed.

[tigress]

There was an instance when a friend received an email sent from my address but it was not really from me. How do you know when your email address had been accessed by other people?

[Binary]

I have a similar problem and had planned to ask the question. I was also wondering if these person could also send my contacts the spam emails.

[Quilceda]

The way I understand it, it's typically much easier to "spoof" an email address than to fraudulently acquire usernames and passwords ("phishing") or to hack into an account. If you've never shared your password online or otherwise, you probably have nothing to worry about. You might go ahead and change your password, just in case, but you'll probably solve the problem by following the advice listed above.