Email reported undelivered - but I never sent it!

It's very easy to spoof email headers and nobody needs access to your computer to do it.

It was most likely someone with your email in their address book who had a visrus, and the virus spoofed your email as the return address.

Email reported undelivered - but I never sent it!
Thanks, Craven. But does that mean that I may have the virus?

I don't think so, tomkitten - or at least, it's not as likely. I know that this happens to me every other week on hotmail and outlook express, and I'm running linux.

Re: Email reported undelivered - but I never sent it!


No, it's possible but it's more probable that someone you know (or who you ahve emailed) does.

Email reported undelivered - but I never sent it!
I just tripped over this in the May 24 issue of Dan Gookin's Weekly Wambooli newsletter.

THIS WEEK'S Q&A
================

Q: Quite often I get a Mail Undeliverable message in my e-mail inbox,
but the message isn't one that I sent and I don't even know the
recipient. Is this a virus? Will my antivirus or firewall software
protect me?

A: Happily, such a thing is not a virus, but it is common. One of two
evils, plus one non-evil, is at work whenever you get this type of
"mail undeliverable" message.

The non-evil, of course, is that the message was sent by you and is
merely a "bounce" from a bad recipient or a bad interpretation of
your e-mail as spam.

The first evil thing is that spammers are aware that most users
recognize and are concerned about bounced e-mail. So they disguise
their tripe as a bounced message in the hopes that you'll read it,
reply, and order their crap.

The second evil thing is spoofing. Some spammer somewhere is using
your e-mail address to send out the messages and because there are
many anti-spam robots out there, the message gets bounced into your
e-mail box instead of going back to the spammer. This is the most
common form of the Mail Undeliverable message.

He's wrong, it's more common with viruses than spammers. Spammers will either use a fake one or target an "authoratative" email (e.g. [email protected]).

Viruses obtain access to the contact lists and then use them to spoof, spammers usually hunt/buy emails to send to, not from.

Happens all the time
I agree that it is the spammers, I did a trace of several just to make sure, a virus check, Ad aware, Spybot and zone alarm, nothing other than the junk senders.