outgoing email question/problem?

[dagnabitboy]

Hello Essexboy!  No, the "undeliverable" emails that my ISP is telling me about are not in my sent folder.  None of the recipient names of these emails are anyone I know, nor are they in my contact list.  If I have a virus that is sending spam, wouldn't it be it use it's own email client/program, so as not to be detected?

I'm still wondering why Avast is not showing that it's checking my outgoing...  isn't that a strong indicator that I have some infection? 

Thanks..

[essexboy]

The Avast out and in stamps have been discontinued as they could lead to a false sense of security ..  Easily faked by spammers/phishers when they send the mail out

As they are not in your sent box then you have not been sending them.. Someone has Hijacked your e-mail address

 

[dagnabitboy]

Hi, thanks for the quick response!  I think you are probably correct that my account was hijacked.  I did change the password on the account and the returned emails seem to have stopped.

Just a note however about emails appearing in my outbox or sent folder, my understanding is they would only do that if someone was actually using my specific email client (Thunderbird) to do the sending on my machine.  For example, I've used "telnet" from the command prompt to send and receive emails from a simple program I wrote years ago in Basic.  There is no trace on the PC of any email activity when doing that.  I just checked and XP SP3 still supports that command line program. 

Most likely someone was using one of the many sendmail programs out there on another PC somewhere.

But thanks to everyone.. the response on this forum was fantastic and amazingly fast!  There is a lot of talent and knowledge here!

[bob3160]

I think you are probably correct that my account was hijacked.  I did change the password on the account and the returned emails seem to have stopped.

Take a look at the following video (with Audio), that will explain the proper Recovery from an Email Hijack (Hack)
I've produced this from a portion of my presentation which is available for computer club and other groups of computer users.