Dodgy emails through my account

[Alan65]

Hi All, Can anyone please help a silver surfer? Over the past couple of months people in my email address book have been receiving emails that look like they have come from me but if you look closely at the email address you can see that they aren’t. These email addresses differ each time. They say they contain photos from me and as I do a lot of photography this is worrying. They mainly end up in peoples’s spam folder. I have had similar emails from one of my friends. So far, as far as I know, no one has opened them. I have changed my  Virgin password at least three times but it has made no difference and my friend has done the same. Any suggestions would be appreciated. Many thanks, Alan

[Graham_A · Accepted solution]

@Alan65  This looks like a classic case of email address spoofing.  The emails are not actually being sent through your VM account.  The miscreant is just faking the email headers to make it appear so.

All you can really do is warn your contacts to beware of these fake emails.

[Alan65]

Thank you for that info.

[Alan65]

Thank you for your previous reply. Contacts from my email address book are still receiving emails purportedly from me. Each time it is a from a different email address so they cannot block it. I have tried taking certain addresses out of my address book but still my contacts are receiving these dodgy emails. Obviously my contacts list has been hacked. I have notified all regular contacts to look out for these dodgy emails. I have changed my password and set up new security questions. I can set up a new email address for myself and let friends know but this doesn’t help with doctors, hospitals, businesses etc. that all hold my existing email address. Is there anyway to stop this? Any help would be appreciated.

[用心棒]

Do you know if those receiving these spoofed email are addressed in the same manner as recorded in your webmail address book or not. For example, if the following entry was being used in a spoofed email then I would expect to see "Jane" <jane.doe@example.com> in the From header of the email:

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@Alan65 wrote:

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… I can set up a new email address for myself and let friends know but this doesn’t help with doctors, hospitals, businesses etc. that all hold my existing email address. Is there anyway to stop this? Any help would be appreciated.

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Organisation are unlikely to review emails flagged as spam without prompting so this is unlikely to be an issue IMHO.

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[goslow]

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@Alan65 wrote:

Thank you for your previous reply. Contacts from my email address book are still receiving emails purportedly from me. Each time it is a from a different email address so they cannot block it. I have tried taking certain addresses out of my address book but still my contacts are receiving these dodgy emails. Obviously my contacts list has been hacked. I have notified all regular contacts to look out for these dodgy emails. I have changed my password and set up new security questions. I can set up a new email address for myself and let friends know but this doesn’t help with doctors, hospitals, businesses etc. that all hold my existing email address. Is there anyway to stop this? Any help would be appreciated.

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Can't help with a direct fix for your problem, unfortunately, but there was a very similar topic here

https://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Security-matters/A-PLAGUE-OF-SPOOFS/td-p/5113530

on the 'Security Matters' forum recently.

You might like to consider checking your email address against known data breaches as described at message #2.

[Alan65]

Thank you for your comment. I have a Yahoo account and even that has received some of these emails. All you can see is my Christian name and surname. If you then click on it you will then see some weird email address which vary. The recent one showed a row of numbers@stu.uskudar.edu.tr

[Alan65]

Thank you for that information.I have found that to be very informative. 

[Lee_R]

Hi Alan65, thanks for getting back to us.

Sorry to hear your issue is ongoing.  Have you managed to follow the advice of goslow?  Also, because the information given by Graham_A, is likely to be correct, regrettably, in the event of email spoofing, there's not really anything we'd be able to do, to stop that.  Please can you check here, for any potential tips?  Please do let us know how things are going?

Regards

Lee_R

[Alan65]

Thank you for taking the time to follow up my problem. I have followed the advice from this forum and Virgin have given me similar advice on changing my password etc. Friends are still receiving these emails and as you say it looks like I cannot stop this. I have notified all the friends that I can about the problem. I do have an alternative email address that i will use to contact close friends and I will only use a web based email. I will certainly never use that email address on web sites, eBay etc. I really do appreciate people on this site trying to help those not so geared up in this technical age, I don’t do so bad for a 75 year old but all the help I have been given is really appreciated.