how is someone able to use my email

[mrmacey]

address to send out those zip files nobody has access to my e mail except me I ran virus scans it does not pick up viruses what can i do to stop whoever is doing it

[The Dad Fisherman]

A disreputable person or program can send out an E-Mail as anybody. I could send you an e-mail using your address and it would only take me about 10 seconds (and thats because I'm a crappy typist).

An E-Mail address is used more as a valid Destination than a Valid Source. Thats how a lot of the E-Mail viruses work. They collect e-mail addresses from a persons Mailbox (Pretty easy to do, anything w/ the "@" sign flags it as an address) and then propagates itself through the internet using its new collection of addresses. A lot of these viruses contain their own "Mail Server" built in.

I always make it a point to tell people to make sure they make there subject lines as descriptive as possible. If I get an e-mail from someone I know and it just has "Hi" or "Funny" or any other 1 or 2 word descriptions in the subject line I just delete it.

[mrmacey]

has nothing to do with my virus scanning is there anything I can do to stop it I deal with alot of corporations dont want email with viruses going to them

[spence]

Just make sure you have a good virus scanner and set it to update the virus profile frequently and scan all incoming email and files.

Some email services provide more robust virus scanning. If you're really paranoid, use a web browser based email and never attach anything to your messages.

-spence

[mrmacey]

Im getting e mails saying Im sending viruses dont look good

[The Dad Fisherman]

Not really to much you can do. Its probably getting your address out of someone elses mailbox. Make sure you always put in a real ly good descriptive subject line to exactly what this e-mail is pertaining to or Come up with a standardized form for customer contacts. People need to realize that the problem isn't just a switch you can flip. They need to be Pro-active and look at e-mails when they get them and:

A: Make sure you know the Person who Sent it
B: Look at the subject Line and determine if Said person would send me an E-Mail w/ A blank or simple Subject Line
C: Am I expecting anything from this person

If it doesn't match up to one of the criteria either delete it or send a message to that person to clarify if they sent it or not.

Keeping your Anti-virus up to date helps, get the updates on a nightly basis, But there are dozens of new viruses that come out every day and one will slip through.

[jugstah]

Many people don't realize this but TDF is right, it is *VERY* easy for anyone, including you if you know the steps, to forge an email and send it out. All it takes is an open mail server on someone else's end, whether it be in Korea or in Taiwan or right here in the good ol' USA.

As TDF said, make sure you have the latest available anti-virus protection and also the latest virus definition usually downloadable from your AV's company website. And also, make sure you have scanned your computer for spyware using ad-aware and spy-bot and spyhunter.

If you have a company webpage, make sure your email address isn't so readily available for a spammer to find and use. I often suggest you use something like "loohooseerrr at yahoo.com" rather than "loohooseerrr@yahoo.com"

Have a good day.