Strange emails...

I'm usually pretty technically saavy, but these new emails are confounding me. And I'm getting a lot of them to non-working addresses (the company has it set up so our general email account gets anything that isn't a valid address @ourdomainname.com Probably not the best situation, but they want to make sure that people who can't spell still get their emails delivered to the right people.)

They have a variety of subject lines, and from any number of addresses. They all have one word in the actual email. No rhyme or reason to what the words are either. No attachments, no viruses detected. No HTML coding.

Anyone else getting these? Does anyone know, are they new-fashioned spiders just seeing what email addresses work and I'll get inundated with spam sometime in the future? I haven't seen any big warnings about emails like this, so I'm just wondering what they really are, besides annoying!

Oh no Heidi, I´m not that case but thanks for the warning! ....

heidi...do you have virus protection on your computer???......we had a slew of these a couple of years ago..at least in this area, but i am not sure of where else....they fell under the same description...one word emails..they ended up being virus'......im not sure if this is the case with you...but i had to bring it up...also.....isnt that how the "love bug" virus was as well.....

Heidi i get them also and even from people with @hotmail.com

BUt i usually have them already in my junk folder.
I have no idea what they are but usually i dont open them unless i know what it is.

I am getting stuff that is just jibberish. Most of it is from people telling me I can have larger ummmm...member.

Originally Posted by Nebula11

heidi...do you have virus protection on your computer???......we had a slew of these a couple of years ago..at least in this area, but i am not sure of where else....they fell under the same description...one word emails..they ended up being virus'......im not sure if this is the case with you...but i had to bring it up...also.....isnt that how the "love bug" virus was as well.....

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Yeah, we do have virus protection. We have the Symantec Corporate Virus Shield. Not that I totally trust it, because it is still Norton under a different name, but it has caught many other virus emails since it was installed. I don't get them at home, where I have a different (and much better, IMO) virus program, Bitdefender.

Oh, we get those all the time. They're spoofs. We get them at home and at work. My IT guy explained it to me a while ago, but I don't remember exactly what he said. He said just don't open them and you'll be safe.

Originally Posted by TTMom

Oh, we get those all the time. They're spoofs. We get them at home and at work. My IT guy explained it to me a while ago, but I don't remember exactly what he said. He said just don't open them and you'll be safe.

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Yep. We have a huge LAN here at the office, and we run a Windows NT platform with a T1 line. We have firewalls, spam filters -- the works, but these pesky ones get through, and they look exactly like the way you describe. Some say "for you" or "thanks" or "call me" or "you did" or whatnot. They're kinda a ghost spam thing. TTMom's guru was right and it's hard to explain, it's like a spammer, hacker, or whatever tries at one point in time and leaves a code floating around in your system. Like a ghost. Every now and then that "leftover" code makes sense to your Outlook and it will get into your address book and send you stuff from people you either know, or it scans your Outlook history from anyone, really. They are annoying, but don't open the envelope and just delete them, which works really well if your email Inbox is set up w/Auto Preview. My boss looks at her email and asks me, "Why is this person sending me this? When did I ever write to him?" and I have to explain. We do have an Anti-Spam program we pay for and it allows us to click/drag the item into a "This should be Blacklisted" folder, which does try to stop it in the future, but if it's sent from within our own address books, it's really hard. Then it ends up blocking a legitimate person!

Originally Posted by allissa

I just got one of those as well.
How can it be virus, there is no attachement?

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Alissa,

I am the ultimate computer-dummy, so I will start by saying that I know not what I am talking about. And I seldom do that.

But -- I have been told by those who know that the virus-vandals, and that is exactly what I think they are -- "vandals" -- no different than someone who walks alongside your car and drags a key along your paintwork -- have come up with ways to infect your computer with a virus without your even having to open an attachment.

Please do not ask me how.

Ann and I do not even read an e-mail unless we are confident that we (1) know the sender, and (2) know that the sender is responsible. The latter proviso was added after one of our very good, but irresponsible, friends sent us, in all innocence, a virus. TWICE.

BTW - your name, Alissa, really rang a bell. I have the pleasure of being a member of the volunteer crew of a beautiful ship, a square-rigged barque, named ELISSA. I beg TCS forgiveness for showing her off to you, in the attached photo. The ELISSA is berthed in Galveston, Texas, and is used to train young, and not-so-young, people the wonders of sailing a square-rigger -- the way it once was in the day of iron men and wooden ships. She is probably the oldest still-sailing square-rigger in the U. S. -- 128 years young!

All the best for the very best new year,

Jim

Originally Posted by fwan

Heidi i get them also and even from people with @hotmail.com

BUt i usually have them already in my junk folder.
I have no idea what they are but usually i dont open them unless i know what it is.

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I have used Hotmail for over 7 years now. About a year ago, I ended up getting returned mail in my inbox because it was being sent to an invalid addy. The bad thing was... The name of the sender was NOT mine, just the addy was mine. The worst part was, when I opened and read the mail that was returned to my account, it was spam, not just spam, but enlarge.. um stuff spam. I was so mad. Now most of my contacts don't mail me back, because my email addy is associated with spam Not just spam, but enlarge ... yeah, you get it, spam.

I still use my hotmail account, and I haven't gotten any returned mail for about 6 months. I was in contact with the hotmail people, and they said that a third party was using my addy, but NOT my account... I don't know how that worked.

Myself, I've gotten a lot of spam lately, and I have to reset my junk filter. Not all HOTMAIL people are spammers. All my family and friends use Hotmail. I am the only one who's had problems, but my account is pretty old. I almost closed it, but I stuck with it.

I don't know what you are getting Heidi, but I hope it's not bad.

I've had that same problem with my hotmail account. Sometimes I just get one "Undeliverable" message, and sometimes I get twelve. It's annoying, but not as bad as it was when I only had 2MB and it would fill my inbox. What happens is that someone uses their servers but makes it appear that the message is being sent from your email address. It's called spoofing, and they aren't actually accessing your account. It's just an illusion to fool people into thinking you're sending the message.

I've also had my account for at least eight years, and I figure it happens to me because my email address is a dictionary word. I won't let the spoofers and spammers chase me away!

Originally Posted by cloud_shade

I've had that same problem with my hotmail account. Sometimes I just get one "Undeliverable" message, and sometimes I get twelve. It's annoying, but not as bad as it was when I only had 2MB and it would fill my inbox. What happens is that someone uses their servers but makes it appear that the message is being sent from your email address. It's called spoofing, and they aren't actually accessing your account. It's just an illusion to fool people into thinking you're sending the message.

I've also had my account for at least eight years, and I figure it happens to me because my email address is a dictionary word. I won't let the spoofers and spammers chase me away!

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Really??? The hotmail people I talked with said they didn't know how it was done. I suppose things have changed since then. Are you still getting them? I have all of mine saved. And yeah, the 2mb limit sucked getting all those returned mails.

Now I have 250mb space on my account, so it's not so bad, but I am not recieving those returns anymore.

It was very frusterating, especially because I do'nt want to be associated with such solicitations... enlarging.... blah!

I'm glad you are sticking with your account. I did make a new one, and it only has 25mb of space, how big is yours?(hotmail account )

Jim that is a magnificent sailing vessel!!!!!! Oh, what wouldn't I give to be on that.

Originally Posted by valanhb

Yeah, we do have virus protection. We have the Symantec Corporate Virus Shield. Not that I totally trust it, because it is still Norton under a different name, but it has caught many other virus emails since it was installed. I don't get them at home, where I have a different (and much better, IMO) virus program, Bitdefender.

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I had symantec for years but when I upgraded to AOL 9 it conflicted or ? with it. Then AOL offered McAffee and since I needed a virus protection I went with it. It has caught 2 or 3 viruses and Norton never caught any!

i also get them quite alot, but i have a feature on my e-mail where i can 'bounce to sender', which means it sends them a message back saying that my email address was not recognised etc and i dont get them after that

Seems to me I'm the only one without that problems........

Originally Posted by cazx01

i also get them quite alot, but i have a feature on my e-mail where i can 'bounce to sender', which means it sends them a message back saying that my email address was not recognised etc and i dont get them after that

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Oh, that would be nice! Unfortunately, because of how our email is set up they can send it to jsdk23sdfhu@... and I'll still receive it. And with no Bounce Email option they all show as valid accounts to the idiots sending them out.

It's not just hotmail accounts that are spoofed, although the big providers are usually hit harder than other domains (AOL, Yahoo, Hotmail, MSN, etc.). Our company domain was spoofed from a BS addy (like djhg32jdjg), and I actually got a very ANGRY email from some man telling me to stop sending him viruses! I just wrote back and explained that the emails weren't even from a real email addy, that the hackers had spoofed our domain. And I get the bounced emails even to our SaveSamoa & SPA accounts, so it happens to everyone. Tia, whoever said they didn't know how it happens may not have been lying - they personally may not have understood it. But I guarantee that Hotmail knows...they just can't stop all of them.

Be really careful with these because sometimes certain viruses aren't detected - it depends on how up to date your fire-wall and virus-shield are. Some that aren't detected are dialler viruses - they change your internet setting to patch you through to a premium rate internet provider and though you maybe won't notice, it will charge you a great deal more than you will normally pay. If you pay a flatrate internet charge, all that it does to you will give you the annoyance of having to change your settings back from time to time. These viruses copy themselves in an attempt to keep itself on your PC - in this case it's a pain and a system restore will be needed. Beware that some of these track cookies and anything that involves you entering passwords and suchlike. If your passwords are automatically entered for you instead of you typing them in every time you are asked for it, it will record that password and where you typed it in. Those details will then be used to change various things. (n.B. watch for anything containing the words "HIKEY" and "HIKEY_USERS" - I believe they're hackers of a sort) I'm not entirely sure how it will affect you if you're on DSL (broadband) all the time... If you're one of the more unfortunate people like me who do have to dial in every time, then it's pretty irritating. Just a word of warning

I always get these too. But I have good virus protection so I'm not too worried.

I had the disembowler virus this fall that took me HOURS!! to remove. Since then I've been getting emails at home in a foreign language Cyrillic perhaps. I opened one via my work email better firewalls it was a car ad for Citroen!! Weird.