How to protect my e-mail address?

[susanscent]

Hello all,

I like here and I am here again to seek help from you all. Hopefully there is someone can help me out.

I don't know who is that boring IT (engineer) playing a dirty game on me, he/she can now under my name to send e-mails to others. To be exactly he/she sent e-mails using my mailaddress. It is unbearable for me coz I am now runing my business at www.chinatoolmfg.com and trying to promote my business.

I have checked and updated virus protection program in my computer and I am sure up to now my computer has not been infected any virus. So can someone advice me on this?

I will really appreciate it if someone can give me any constructive suggestion.

Regards
Susan
www.chinatoolmfg.com

[LooseChippings]

As soon as you tell a third party your email address you are open to abuse.

Anyone with your email address and without proper security on their system can make your email address public to the spammers and their friends.

All you can do is setup your pc with the best security that you can find and then follow a few simple rules ...

Do not open email attachments that you are not expecting.

Do not 'unsubscribe' from spam emails - all you are doing is confirming that your email address is good.

Do not respond to online banking questionaires / lost your details type forms.

Do not open any Microsoft Updates that come by email - Microsoft do not send updates by email.

Register for an online email provider so that you can use that email address for out of work activities.

[susanscent]

Thank you LooseChippings!

By this time, one thing I can conclude is that the player can forge others' e-mail headers very easily. (Is there anyone can explain how come that guy do this? Does he need a program? What's the program like?)

But I am still not sure if the guy can really send e-mails from my outbox. I doubt on it and want to testify it. Can anyone help me on this?

By now, I only got failure despatch report from others (they were suspicious mails from address like Postmaster@theaa.com, postmaster@centrica.com, zybc@peoplemail.com.cn and null_user_9753@people.com.cn)
and I haven't got any auto failure despatch report from my mail provider as normally.

Looking forward to hearing from this more.

Thanks in advance!
Susan

[snowmonkey]

Hi susanscent,

I don't usually jump on someone else's thread specially someone like LooseChippings...

Anyways, there are many ways of forging someone else's email...Basically, ANYONE with a bit of knowledge about email server and how it works can send email on anyone's hehalf...

First you need a software that can do an email blast (easily found on the net)
second, you need a zombie server that can relay your email (you can find that with a port scanning software that are dim a dozen)
Third, you need bunch of valid email address (last I checked it was $35 for 25 Million email address)
so you see any one can do that and it is not necessarily a board IT person.

I have had email addressed to me by Network Administrator or our company that my email account has been suspended and for detail I have to click on such and such link,,, guess what, I am the Network Administrator and I did not send email to any one and email header was saying that in was from our company......

One way of finding what the email is really coming from is to high light the email and then right click on the mouse and click on the option ,, you will see something like this:


Microsoft Mail Internet Headers Version 2.0
Received: from new.toad.com ([209.237.225.253])... blah blah

That was an spam email I got today. The email came from "209.237.225.253" IP address, now that could be a real email server with no security or someone old ladies computer with out security.... .... then only way of combating this issue right now is to have a email checking server (many big company like Symantec and Computer Assoscite...) that does a reverse DNS lookup on the original email and check the result against a database of banned email server and everything is OK then it will let the email through......(this is a big topping and it could be discussed for hours .)

cheers

[LooseChippings]

Hi Snowmonkey

Thanks for the indepth info mate.

[susanscent]

Hi Snowmonkey,

Very glad to hear your instructive guide again! Though I haven't talked much here, it is very fortunate to hearing from you again!

Thanks again
Susan