"from" my OWN address?

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Hello I'm New here! Joined: 28 May 2013 Posts: 1

Received 2 e-mails soliciting workers for "turnover derived from sales of intellectual property..." Not unusual, EXCEPT: it not only was to, it was also FROM my exact e-mail address. And when I hit Reply it came BACK to that address, not the usual scam-reply "unable to delivery" message.

I'm waiting for my ISP guy to get back to me, but wonder: does this mean someone has control of that whole e-mail account? Anyone else having this situation?

Thanks.

Posted: Tue May 28, 2013 12:29 pm

Take a look at your "Sent E-mails" folder and see if they really were sent from your account. If they don't show they've been sent from your account then they're most probably just spoofing yours. I'm surprised they aren't sending a different "Reply to" in their e-mail though. I would also change my password while I'm there.

There might be more good advice from other members.

ETA: I think I like the ideas below better. Thanks VX.

Posted: Tue May 28, 2013 12:52 pm

Look at the headers. It's trivial to put anything in the From and To headers, but the Received headers will show where it really came from. Also look at the Reply-To header, if any, and look in the body for an email address.

Posted: Tue May 28, 2013 1:13 pm

As said above: check the Sent Box first and see if it's come out of your address. It's unlikely a scammer would delete in Sent - they just tend to mass-mail crap out and move on until the next mailshot.
Knowing where the mail was sent from won't really help - you already know it wasn't you who sent it.
It's a possible you've picked up a trojan or have been phished so first thing to do is run a complete virus scan. I tend to use a couple of programmes so if one misses something, hopefully the other will pick it up.

Don't change your passwords until after you've run the scans. Once you're sure you're clean, then change everything.

Posted: Tue May 28, 2013 6:05 pm

I've had several lads use my address as the "from" after they discovered they'd been had. I just end up with all of their "undeliverable" messages.

I also provide them pain to get them to stop!

Posted: Tue May 28, 2013 7:26 pm

It could be spoofed. There are mail spoofers, that will do that. Some of them can be used in clever ways by baiters, but unfortunately, scammers can make good use of them, too.