[OT] I've been spoofed!

[Psion]

Hey all, I had a question and the usual channels don't seem to be yielding any answers.

My public email address at yahoo seems to be the target of a spoofing, as I am getting loads of returned email with spam in it, with my email addess but with a body that I didn't send and linking to some spammer's site.

I hate to trash this account... is there any way for me to stop the spoofing?

 

[Maraxle]

Sorry, but I'd say that the damage is done. If they've used your account once, they'll do it again. Unless you can find out who did it, and get them to stop, I'd trash the account. Besides, your address is probably on blacklists all over the world by now because of this.

 

[diamud]

Yep, give it up.

 

[Fast Learner]

I wouldn't advise you to give it up, neccessarily. It happened to me for several days and then stopped, and that was many months ago.

 

[Nareau]

There are some resources out there to help you find out more about your spoofer:

http://email.about.com/library/weekly/aa090897.htm

It may be that the spammer isn't actually accessing your account. Instead, they may be simply putting your addy in the "From:" field of the headers.

At any rate, it probably can't hurt to track down the originating IP addy, find out who their ISP is, and report them.

Other than that, you may be able to filter this mail out through Yahoo's mailbox options.

Good luck,
Spider

 

[Psionicist]

Yup. Get a spam filter such as BMF. Will do the trick.

 

[Psionicist]

Oh, and never never never write your e-mail on the internet, you can hide it though, such as psion[at]yahoo[dot]com. It is very easy to code something that will start on google, go through websites and harvest email accounts by looking for the @ and . in a string. Never link to your email account with mailto: either, equally bad idea.

 

[Heretic Apostate]

Anyone know how to close a Yahoo mail account without closing the overall account, as well?

I've got three Yahoo accounts that I've set up that have such things as my Yahoo wallet, my stocks, and so on, but the problem is they've been found by spammers. I've tried to set up filters on my accounts, but at most Yahoo will let you tell them which folder to send them to, not even letting you tell them to delete them.

Any help would be appreciated...