Eugene's observations

Let's assume that many of the people in your address book have just received a message purporting to come from you and with little more than a link to a website and possibly an inducement to visit it.  Or maybe the message states that you are overseas with no money and just need a little help from your friends.

Faking the sender?s address is not uncommon currently as it is thought to induce a sense of trust that may lead the recipient to click on the link.  Such links often lead to sites that deploy a type of malware that silently pick up the contents of address books and headers of saved e-mails and send them back to base to be sold or leased on to would be spammers, hackers and rogues in the knowledge that such addresses are known to be valid and linked to another trusted address (in this case, yours).

 It is very probable that your computer has not been infected, and equally likely that one of your correspondents? has (or perhaps the server has as happened with all AOL accounts recently).  Once infected their address book and/or the headers of the emails they have sent have been harvested and the contents, including yours, used to fake the recipient into thinking that a message came from you and can therefore be trusted.  

I suggest you now take the following precautionary steps:

• Change the password to your e-mail account and any other accounts that share the same password.
• Ensure that your Internet security package is not a free one and is up-to-date then scan your computer(s) for infections.
• Ask senders of emails that include you in a long list in the To: or CC: fields to protect you by using the BCC: field instead.

• Enjoy reading some of my earlier blog posts such as

  • Password Security & Managers
  • How to stay safe
  • Anti-Virus and Internet Security recommendations for the year
  • Multiple passwords
  • Anti-virus protection - free or paid ?

Please feel free to pass this on to anyone you feel should see it and let me know if there is anything I may help with.  You may like to send a link to this item to anyone you believe has been sent mail falsely claiming to be from you.