A nasty development in spam email

[13788]

Ineligible: We all know that viruses often hijack people's mailing lists, and they send emails out with fake 'From' addresses taken from the list, so people think it comes from somewhere other than where it really came from.

From some bounced emails I've had in the last two days, it seems that now spam emails are being sent out using my address as a fake 'From' address. Very unpleasant.

If you get an email apparently from me, trying to sell stuff, I didn't send it. If it has a name attached different from "Pete Ineligible", it didn't come from me.

 

[jonb]

It's been around a while; it's called relay rape.

 

[Pecker]

I know what you mean, ineligible. I keep getting e-mails from myself.

I'm suspicious of them, though, because I already know everything I could tell myself anyway.

Seriously, the subject line can be a dead giveaway when there's a virus or trojan horse aboard, such as "your file" or "undeliverable mail" or "Hi!" (always short and randomly selected.)

And don't open files that end in: CMD, EXE, PIF, SCR or other unfamiliar-looking extensions unless you're absolutely sure what's in there.