Others sending mail as me

[chairwars]

Is it possible for someone else to send an email and make it look as though it has come from my address?

I have been receiving emails from virus blockers saying that I sent an email containing the sobig virus but I have definately not been infected with it.

[bcolflesh]

It is simple to fake SMTP headers - happens all the time. Don't worry about it.

[TheDoctor]

The SoBig virus spreads by faking "from" addresses. If you receive an email containg the virus, it is almost certain that the one person innocent of sending it to you is the person whose address is in the "from" header.

[oilman]

yeah - I'm getting a lot of 'bounces' as well thanks to Sobig - nothing you can do but hunker down and weather the storm.

[PeterD]

The virus blockers should really quit sending these notifications for viruses for which it is well-known that the "from" address is faked. Within a day or two of the sobig oubreak, it was pretty well-understood that the "from" addresses were fake. These bogus "you sent a virus" messages are almost as big an annoyance as the virus itself, and probably caused a lot of confusion among the less tech-savvy recipients.

Edited:reworded for clarification.

[Brougham]

[U.K. Based] I think this problem is worsening, especially as AOL are concerned. My email server and my domain name have been blocked by AOL for at least a couple of weeks as they record that they have been used for extensive spamming, not by me they haven't. My ISP are aware of a general problem but cannot give fix dates. Seriously affecting my ability to carry out my hotel business (I have a hotel as well as a website designer business). Currently I'm having to transfer, by floppy disc, outgoing emails going to AOL hotel customers to another computer using a different ISP and domain name - very - very frustrating.

I've written a letter to my ISP as emails just get a generalised response.

Not sure if it's wise to post the ISP name.

Anybody else found this? and any suggestions of a fix? - moving ISP wouldn't help the domain blocking.

Regards,

[rcjordan]

>AOL

[webmasterworld.com...]

As for the topic, it's a common spammer tactic called "spoofing" --very
easy to do. If they are not interested in a reply (or interested in deflecting the reply), anyone can mimic anyone else's email address.

Amazon.com has just sued some spoofers. Article and links here.

[up2speed.com...]

[chairwars]

Ok thanks for the help. Good to know its not a problem.

[grandpa]

I think think the irritating part of the Sobig aftermath is certain email accounts that are now sending (several times a day in one case) alerts to me that I have sent an infected e-mail. I've tried in vain to contact some of these folks to have them quit bouncing messages back to me - just delete the thing from their server... alas.

I had one university tell me to install virus protection on my system. I really hope they got my response!

Sorry, this degenerated into a war story.

[BjarneDM]

I'm not that plagued by Sobig.F bounces, but I do send a polite nasty-gram to ISPs that are so incompetent as to bounce that kind of S***:

Please take the test described at the end of this article:
[oreillynet.com...]

And then please take the appropiate actions regarding how you handle
Sobig.F :-(((

I can't get any WinTel virus, have never had one of them and will never
get one of them either.

<signed with name & address>
denne besked er skrevet i et totalt M$/Intel-frit miljų
MacOS X 10.2.6 Jaguar ; Mozilla 1.5b ; PowerPC G4 800MHz
<included bounced email in source form>

To day I've never had one single postmaster neither apologising nor responding in any way. I guess they are *really* embarrased by their ineptitude :-)

Maybe there would be grounds for a libel suit?
They *do* accuse you of having done something that you haven't done on dubious grounds and due to their professional position they *really* *really* ought to know better, so there's really no viable excuse for them.