Returned mail I have not sent

[Lyn]

I continue to get mail returned to me from (e-mail address removed) for an
address of someone I do not know. Why don't I show e-mail going to this
person? Also, it gives the reason undeliverable due to unrepairable virus.

I am using Outlook 2003 and this is happening with 2 of my e-mail addresses.
I did notice this person's e-mail in a list from a friend of mine, but to my
knowledge I have never sent anything to this address.

Help! I would like to know what is going on and how to stop it. I use
AdAdware, Norton Internet Security and Spybot and nothing ever comes up. I
also do not understand how someone can use my e-mail address without my
knowledge.

Thanks for you patience!

 

[Charlie Tame]

The "From" address in an email is easily forged by spammers and viruses, but
the server rejecting such things is not aware of that so is sending them
back to the only address it has, the forged one, which in this case is
yours. These addresses are "Harvested" from numerous sources. Viruses may
read the address book, or maybe those emails which some friend has forwarded
that contain 1000 email addresses, spammers harvest emails from newsgroups
and those "Send this page to a friend" sites.

The messages you get back won't appear in your sent items folder because you
did not send them, nor do they mean that your machine is infected with a
virus, it just happens and there's no real way to stop them.

If you have software for filtering out spam you can simply mark them as junk
mail, if not just delete them, you should not open them or any attachments
in case the server did actually send back a virus. You can't stop it, all
you can do is make sure your AntiVirus is kept up to date so you can be
reasonably sure it is not you.

Charlie

 

[Lyn]

Thanks for your response Charlie. It is a nuisance!