Outlook Sending mail

is there a way to see what it is sending?

[AprilS]

I am a little concerned - today my Outlook is sending mail - sometimes through all of my accounts. the only reason I noticed it is because one of the accounts failed - so outlook showed sending failed on that particular account. I immediately closed everything - went to symantec - got the newest virus definations as mine were a day old. installed them and scanned the whole computer....it found NO viruses.

Has anyone ever experienced this? Does anyone know of a way to see exactly what it is trying or IS sending?

[Mardi_Gras]

I presume you have disabled automatic send/receive and still saw this behavior?

[bcolflesh]

Anyone can forge certain email headers and cause your address to get bounce backs - examine the complete headers of the return message and see where it actually came from.

[2oddSox]

If you've got virus protection configure it to scan outgoing e-mails. Trojans and the like normally don't use the client to send mails so virus scanning software can alert you to any outgoing mails that you normally wouldn't be aware of.

[AprilS]

Mardi_Gras - I just turned off the auto send/receive. however, when I hit the send/receive button - ALL my accounts say they are "sending" email. One of my accounts errors out because there is not actual user on the server (our catchall account).

I still wish I could see WHAT it is sending as there is NOTHING new in the sent fold and nothing in the outbox.

[AprilS]

2oddSox -
Our norton antivirus is setup to scan outgoing email. each time we send an email that little norton window pops up show it is scanning it - however - with this issue of outlook saying it is sending emails - the norton anti-virus doesn't pop anything up.

[Mardi_Gras]

I don't think the behavior you describe is unusual. It sends and receives - that doesn't mean an e-mail is actually going out. My dialog box says "Sending and downloading messages" even when there are none being sent.

I asked about disabling the automatic send receive because I wanted to make sure it was not, literally, sending mails of its own accord.

[AprilS]

ya - but normally it only "sends" email through the account I wrote an email through. Now every 30 seconds or so it says it is sending on ALL accounts...not send and receiving....just sending.

[Mardi_Gras]

Hmmm...as you know, that is not typical beahvior.

[2oddSox]

AprilS,

By the sounds of things I don't think you have anything to worry about.

As you have Nortons I'm sure you'll see the pop-up if outgoing e-mails were actually being sent.

Take keyloggers for example - they send log files of keystrokes (unknown to the user) to the recipient. They go out using the mail protocol but don't activate the client. Norton's shows what's happening by scanning them and you see the pop-up box alerting you to the fact that a mail is being sent.

As bcolflesh pointed out, your headers might be being forged - which is quite a common situation.

2odd...

[bcolflesh]

so outlook showed sending failed on that particular account

I realize from later posts that I misunderstood this as meaning that she got a "Failed Delivery" bounce email - please ignore!

[AprilS]

These are not forged headers as I'm not having issues with "inbound" emails. Outlook is all of a sudden shows it is "sending" on all of my mail accounts approximately every 30 seconds.

The reason I stated that I noticed one account failed is because it was not setup on the server for sending mail because it is our catchall account.

Since I can't see "what" outlook says it is "sending" I'm curious if there is any known way to check this out to see what it is really doing.

[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 4:41 am (utc) on Feb. 28, 2004]
[edit reason] Deleted off topic comments [/edit]

[2oddSox]

Try deleting and recreating your SMTP account and rebooting your machine (if you haven't done so already).

[edited by: DaveAtIFG at 4:43 am (utc) on Feb. 28, 2004]
[edit reason] Deleted off topic comments [/edit]

[AprilS]

SPECIAL NOTE:

Here is what I did. We had a copy of McAfee Personal Firewall. I've never installed it before, but I knew it monitors all traffic....so I installed it rebooted and it INSTANTLY found the "W32/Netsky.c@MM" mass mailing virus.

So, here is my warning! Norton Antivirus isn't catching that virus from my experience. I even did they're latest release today and did a full system scan. However, McAfee firewall caught it in a split second the moment I opened Outlook.....and that isn't their virus scanning software. I think I will be uninstalling Norton Antivirus and installing Mcaffee antivirus immediately!