About Email Hijack, Spoof and Phishing

Where to file a report (fraudulent) business practices report.
You are encourage to forward a copy of the spam to the "Federal Trade Commission (FTC)" at uec@ftc.gov where it will be examined for possible fraudulent business practices or a victim of false spam complaints... file a victim report?

How to set your mail client for auto alert when virus attempt
to send to contacts from your address book?

Virus, spambot or spam zombies infected your Windows machine and turn it into a spam factory or your mail server got cracked and you are a spam source

What do you do with hoax or suspicious emails or phishing scams?

If the email appears to be from PayPal, eBay, your bank, broker, ISP, telephone or electric company, Better Business Bureau, etc., asking for your confidential details, it's a scam.  Reputable companies will never ask for your password.  Forward the email to the company in question; they will appreciate it.

To check on identity theft and Internet scams, visit http://www.scambusters.org/ You can read about the latest threats making the rounds at http://snopes.com 

To submit a complaint about a particular company to the U.S. Federal Trade Commission here:
https://rn.ftc.gov/pls/dod/wsolcq$.startup?Z_ORG_CODE=PU01

Can anyone help me?
I have tried support, but they only send a short note saying that I have spammed. They will not reply any further E-mails from me. I can't rectify my ways, if I don't know what I did.
I have not used the e-mails for SPAMming. In fact I was SPAMmed with hundreds of E-mails daily from the day I opened the E-mail without even using this "NEW" E-mail address.

A. Whoever hijacked or spoofed your email address and use it as a "reply to: address" are victims of new from of harassment in which fake or boogie messages was sent-out posing as the original owner of the email address by spoofing--usually done by dissatisfied or fired employees, competitors, pranksters, junk mailers, provocateurs or due to someone computer infected with "spam zombies or spambot" and your email address is in their address book.
 

I signed up for a couple of FREE E-mail
One of the "NEW" addresses immediately started filling up with hundreds of SPAM E-mails, as I had not even used it yet. The next day the free email address quit working. No warning. No advice. Nothing. I contacted the support guy, and all I rec'd was "deleted for spamming" and NO further explanation. Now they will not even reply my E-mail.

A. Time is of economic value, if you are using a "free" email ISP's service--as far as they are concern--it is cheaper to terminate your account without notification on the assumption that you are spamming (and that you can always create another new account).

My email address is being used by some spammer as his reply-to... and I'm getting tons of bounce-backs... and I'm afraid that my email address will become blacklisted...

A. Whoever hijacked or spoofed your email address and use it as a reply to: address--victims of these new from of harassment in which fake or boogie messages was sent-out posing as the original owner of the email address by spoofing--are usually done by dissatisfied or fired employees, competitors, pranksters, junk mailers, provocateurs or due to someone computer infected with spam zombies or spambot and your email address is in their address book.

Most mail server would have blocked your email domain by now (if not black listed already) that's one of the reasons you are getting all those bounced email.

It is quite a lot of hassle for both party concern, since "time" is of high economic value and you are thinking of automating your contacting the mail server admin--they in turn also automate their respond--if they respond at all.

Get a NEW email domain to send outgoing mail with your OLD email as a reply to:  .... and if your NEW email gets hijacked again, at least you get to know that someone out-there is having a grudge against you.

I got SpamCopped a couple weeks ago.
Interesting thing is, the email that was reported was a confirmation email. Probably it is the result of a Klez-infected machine, so the person reporting it may actually not have asked for the subscription.

A. Someone cracks your mail server, you're a spam source.

A. There's a virus/trojan that turns infected Windows machines into spam factories and you could be spamming right now without even knowing it...
 

Proxy-Guzu or Jeem Trojans that hijack ordinary PCs without the owner knowledge by installing built-in SMTP spam zombies Trojans to spam.

Klez virus, for example, select random email address from an infected PCs and insert the email address into the "From:" and "To:" fields, making it appear that someone else has sent the message.

W32.Yaha.P@mm worm/virus that email itself to all of the contacts in your Windows Address Book, MSN Messenger, .NET Messenger, Yahoo Pager, and in all the files whose extensions contain the letters HT.

The email message sent-out contains a randomly chosen subject line, message, and attachment. The virus also attempts to terminate antivirus and firewall processes, and then does a mass mailing.  It does modify your registry, and if successful makes you vulnerable to others trying to access your computer.

How to be notified automatically?

This is one of the ways you can get your mail client (Outlook, Outlook Express, Eudora, etc.) to notify you automatically whenever a worm or virus tries to sent out email from your address book.

1. Simply start-up your mail client and click add new contact.

2. In the field for your new contact name, enter; AAA then when the program prompt you for an email address, enter; VirusAlert complete the rest of the process and save.

This is how it work; AAA will be the first entry in your address book, therefore when any virus or worm attempt to send mail from your address book--starting with the first contact (AAA) it will be unable to deliver to a non-existing address (VirusAlert) and your mail client will notified you almost immediately.

Note: The above method will not prevent virus infection and will not work effectively--if the virus has been programmed to randomly selects addresses. For more info, visit: http://securityresponse.symatec.com/avcenter/data/32.yaha.p@mm.html

Free AVG anti-spyware with free auto update at http://www.grisoft.com

Free AVG anti Virus with auto update is available at http://free.grisoft.com/doc/1

Free Zone alarm firewall with free auto update  at http://www.zonelabs.com then click on Home/Office Products, go to bottom of page and click on FREE ZoneAlarm

Free anti-spam zombies, spambot, spyware, adsware software program download for personal use only from http://www.lavasoft.nu/ 

Free www.antirootkit.com/ aims to help ordinary computer users gain an understanding of Rootkits, what they can do and steps to remove them as well as Prevention, Detection, Identification and Removal.

A rootkit is a program that is designed to hide itself and other programs, data, and/or activity including viruses, backdoors, keyloggers and spyware on a computer system.

Quote: http://www.lavasoft.de/ Most people are familiar with freeware, shareware, cookies, media players, interactive content, and file sharing. What they may not realize is that some of them contain code or components that allow the developers of these applications and tools to actually collect and disseminate information about those using them.

Spoofed by the Spammers

"What can a company do when its domain name has been spoofed? In the past three days, we have received over 1,200 bounced emails that appear to have come from us.

The e-mails are for a refinancing company. I have tried to trace the e-mails through the headers, but they are masked. I even tried submitting a phony refinance request to see if I can get them to call me.

How can I get this to stop? How can I report these people? And how can I avoid our domain getting blacklisted as a spammer for something someone did to us? If this can happen to a little company like ours, it is happening to others as well." -- Angie Keating, Reclamere, Inc.

You're not alone; this has happened to me, also.
To research your question, I consulted with Laura Atkins of Word to the Wise, LLC, an expert on e-mail abuse and deliverability issues. She said that most public blacklists don't list the spammer's domain name but his IP address instead, that spammers sometimes use open proxies overseas that hide their true IP address

It's possible that your domain might be listed in some blacklist somewhere, but if no one is actually bouncing your mail as a result, you don't need worry too much about it. When your mail is being blocked, however, you must take action.

Unfortunately, there's not much recourse for people with this problem. To nab the spammers doing this to you, you must "follow the money," determine who is benefiting monetarily from the spam. Then get yourself an Internet-savvy lawyer and take the spammer to court.

In California and some other states, there is a specific law that makes it illegal to spoof the return address, making it easier to go after such spammers. Otherwise your court case would have to be based on case law rather than existing statutes, an even more expensive proposition.

I encourage you to lobby your legislators for effective federal laws against spamming that (1) aren't watered down so much by the direct marketing industry that they don't do any good, but at the same time (2) are not so restrictive that they make it impossible to conduct legitimate, opt-in e-mail marketing.

"I get quite a lot of virus notification to me stating that email virus was found in my message sent to such and such email address:
(a) The notification does not tell what I should be doing with the information to help me remove the virus.

(b) None of the email addresses belongs to my friends or in address book--in other words, I don't know them or that I have ever contacted them.

"I found out from returned "undelivered" email that those address does not exist in my lists--in the first place, I have never sent them". Read more about virus notification