I Received SPAM From My Own Email - How?

8 replies
The strangest thing happened to me. I have several gmail accounts and several email addresses through my own domain.

I have a gmail account that I only access online (not through outlook) and today I got a spam email from that account to an email address I access through outlook.

I logged into my account and when to the "Sent Items" and sure enough it got sent from my gmail account. The recipients were email addresses that are all mine or were mine at one time.

I immediately changed the password to the account.

Any ideas how this might have happened?
#email #received #spam
  • Profile picture of the author Ron Douglas
    You can use any email address as the from address, that doesn't mean it really came from the same server used by your email account. It's usually just Spammers trying to get your attention.
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    • Profile picture of the author Mike Montgomery
      Originally Posted by Ron Douglas View Post

      You can use any email address as the from address, that doesn't mean it really came from the same server used by your email account. It's usually just Spammers trying to get your attention.
      No this one did come from my email address.

      As I stated I check the sent items and it was in there.
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      • Profile picture of the author Angela V. Edwards
        I'm getting the same sort of spam from my email. After reading your post, I checked my own "sent" file and thankfully, it's not there.

        Originally Posted by Mike X. View Post

        No this one did come from my email address.

        As I stated I check the sent items and it was in there.
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      • Profile picture of the author myob
        Check your header info under "details". There is software that automatically enters the recipients email into the "from" portion to appear as though it was the origination. It happens alot.
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        • Profile picture of the author Solidsnake
          Banned
          Seems your account got hacked!
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        • Profile picture of the author timpears
          Mike,

          I whould have to say that if it is in your sent folder then it came from your account somehow. Either someone hacked your account, or you had more beers today than you thought. I have seen some wacky things with email, such as the hords of undelivered emails that I kept getting for a while, but they weren't in my sent folder and then I found out there was a virus. I don't know what to tell you man, other than to check the fridge and see if you are missing some beers and that is probably the answer. If that is not it, and you do find out what happened, please let us know.

          Tim
          Signature

          Tim Pears

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      • Profile picture of the author Floyd Fisher
        Originally Posted by Mike X. View Post

        No this one did come from my email address.

        As I stated I check the sent items and it was in there.
        Hmmm...seems your gmail account got hacked.

        I've been hearing of a lot of gmail exploits like this one. Perhpas it's time Google got off the snide and fixed them?
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