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Someone sending email from my gmail

2790 Views 7 Replies 5 Participants Last post by TonyB25, Sep 7, 2014

sabretd

Discussion Starter · Sep 5, 2014

Someone seems to be sending emails from my gmail account to my contacts. However, there is no record of the emails in my sent items. I've had people forward me the messages that were sent (usually a random link), and gmail flags them as suspicious. The only record I have of them is that occasionally they show up in my spam when the address is wrong and they bounce back (there is usually a error message that says " It seems to be a fake "bounce" reply to a message that you didn't actually send.")

I've changed my password several times, forwarded the email headers to google, turned on two-step verification and checked for any suspicious login activity. Any suggestions on what to do to fix this?

Thanks!

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DaveA

· #2 · Sep 5, 2014

Your email address has been "Spoofed".
They do NOT even need to have access to your email server, all they have to do is set up that your email address is the return address.

Have a read at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_spoofing

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valis

· #3 · Sep 5, 2014

^^^

what he said. He just beat me to it.

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sabretd

Discussion Starter · #4 · Sep 5, 2014

Would that explain how they are able to access my contacts (and not just fake an email from my name)? Any suggestions how to block/fix it?

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cwwozniak

· #5 · Sep 5, 2014

If you had ever sent a single email with multiple addresses from your contacts list in the To and/or Cc list, it is possible that one of the recipient's computers might have had a virus that harvested those addresses and delivered them to a spammer.

There is not much you can do to stop anyone from sending spam and making it look like it came from you.

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DaveA

· #6 · Sep 5, 2014

They are not just sending to your contacts, just happens some of the addresses they have collected are also a contact of yours.

That said, yes there is malware that can read your contacts and send the list out to the spammers.

Also one can harvest all of the addresses that are included in the "Family, joke and etc." types of emails. There are even place you can sell these to. That is why when you forward this type of emails, you should remove the other addresses.

Most of the time, after a few days they will stop using your address and contacts and move on to someone else that may have better responses.

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sabretd

Discussion Starter · #7 · Sep 5, 2014

Thanks. I appreciate the input. It did seems to stop happening for several months, but now it happened again so I was wondering what (if anything) could be done. I'll keep a close eye on things.

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TonyB25

· #8 · Sep 7, 2014

Make sure to turn on 2-factor authentication.
https://www.google.com/landing/2step/

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