[SEL] OFF TOPIC:

[bill at antique-engines.com]

ONE possible cause - there are other scenerios.......
You are computer A
Another person who has your email address somewhere on their computer is
Comnputer B. They may have it in an address book, in Outlook or any other
email application (just like we all do since we receive list messages from
you with your address in it) or they may have visited a web site that has
your address on it, whatever, Computer B has your email address existing
in some file or document or mailbox on that computer.
Computer C is the innocent person who receives the spam or worm.

Computer B gets a worm or trojan either through visiting a questionable
web site, or opening an email attachment, or whatever, but Computer B gets
an "infection". Spammers now hire virus and worm writers to assist them in
spreading their wares/messages.

So, that "worm" on Computer B looks for email addresses. It either gathers
them and uses them directly, or it sends them out to a web server
somewhere.
If it uses them directly, it will craft the message and use one email
address as the "from" line, the rest it will use as the "To:" line. It
spoofs the sender, making your address that if found on the hard drive as
the "reply to" person. It then uses its own SMTP server which it installs
on Computer B and sends hundreds of messages out all over, each with
Computer A address - your address, as the from or reply to line.
So any bad email addresses, you get the bounce message because mail
administrators are too dumb to set their software up correctly or can't
change it or don't care.

If it doesn't work directly on the host or infected computer, it sends
those addresses it found to another machine which picks an address or more
at random to use as the reply to or sender address, and it sends out the
spam.

For this to work, the "infected" computer is not running good antivirus
and doesn't have a decent firewall. So it's possible a list member
computer was used to either send the spam, or acted as the source for the
email addresses used. Of course, there are other explanations, such as web
bots harvesting email addresses from web sites, forums, list servers, you
name it.

It used to be this is how worms spread themselves, SPAMMERS liked this so
well, it's free, clean and simple, so they have hired the worm/virus
writers to write little packages up that will do the same thing but use it
to send out spam.

The United States is the number one source of all spam in the world,
sending out over 80% of all spam received in Europe and Australia.

Bill


> Hello Y'all,  I need to ask all of you to do me a favor and that favor is
> if you receive what appears to be spam from me frappi at wcoil.com  hawking
> some love potions or male enhancement thing-a-mer-bobby or whatever,
> please
> let me know about it. Since yesterday I have been getting thousands of
> Returned Mail , Mail Undeliverable, and so on bounce messages. And they
> are
> from as many different peoples email addresses due to a spammer latching
> onto and using my email address as the source for their spam. So far a
> sampling of the bounced emails has not shown any email addresses I am
> familiar with. A large amount of them are to foreign ISPs. Theres many
> different ways these low lifes get your email address. But I'd be
> interested to see if its anyone I know and what group of whom I know If
> any?! thats getting these emails thats supposedly from me. Might just
> narrow it down some. My guess is they are not spamming anyone I know.  My
> guess is some worm or whatever took it from one of my ebay listings. Or a
> web site somewhere.
>   I am now running a spam blocker set up by my ISP for the first time in
> 10
> plus years of internet useage for me. This will not help the poor soles
> getting the spam but at least I am not getting all the returned mail
> notices.
> And yes I am constantly running virus programs, and adaware.
>
>                                                                       Thanks,
> Mark
>
> Mark & Christine Shulaw
> 454 Co. Rd. 33
> Bluffton, OH. 45817  USA            Email: Frappi at wcoil.com
>
> Home #419.358.5206
> Verizon Cell
> #419.516.2996 Mark
> #330.475.4450 Christine
>
>
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