Mother receiving strange emails from using unknown emails- using MY name
5 replies, posted
My mom has been receiving strange e-mails coming from Yahoo email adresses that we don't recognize. Weirdest part is, they're using my name. But they aren't my emails. The content of the emails are just links to websites I've never heard of. Not just normal links either, they're all linking to that site's image servers.
EX: The sender's name is my full name, omitting the middle name. But the emails are ones I or my mom have ever seen before. They're not any of my previous emails.
It's weirding me out because I'm not sure how they know my name, or how I'm in my mom's contact list, nonetheless.
Here are the emails:
[code]leonardtafoya68@yahoo.com
pwrogers46@yahoo.com
vcballer10@yahoo.com[/code]
These are just three of many, I can't get the rest because she's been deleting them until I asked her to save a few.
And here's the sites they link to:
itma.ca
churcheez.com (I think that's how it was spelled)
damascusknifestore.com
Again, three of many for the same reason above.
I dared not to click any of these, so I don't know the contents.
I've googled some of the email adresses and no results come up.
I've also ran the sites through Web of Trust to see if they have any ratings...
... All but one had nothing.
The one that DID have results, was a target of defacement attacks. That one was itma.ca.
[url]http://www.mywot.com/en/scorecard/itma.ca?utm_source=addon&utm_content=popup-donuts[/url]
My mom uses a custom email provided by the university she works at.
I use hotmail (Yeah yeah it sucks but I have no other choice) and there is nothing in my outbox, so it can't be that my email was hacked.
Please help, I have no idea what's going on and she gets several of these a day. They're getting annoying since she already gets hundreds of other emails to sort through.
I get these, it picks a random person from your contact list and fakes their name so that they want to open it
The only thing I can think is to just fliter them out, it's just spam, I get regular emails from somebody I've not seen for years with random links in, just spam advertising
[QUOTE=FlashFireSix;37078017]I get these, it picks a random person from your contact list and fakes their name so that they want to open it
The only thing I can think is to just fliter them out, it's just spam, I get regular emails from somebody I've not seen for years with random links in, just spam advertising[/QUOTE]
Okay... That's simple enough, but I have two questions.
Is there a way to stop them?
And how are they getting contact info from her contact list? I would have thought that it would need to have gotten into her email for that.
[QUOTE=SuperDuperScoot;37078145]Okay... That's simple enough, but I have two questions.
Is there a way to stop them?
And how are they getting contact info from her contact list? I would have thought that it would need to have gotten into her email for that.[/QUOTE]
I created a spam filter that blocked the address it was coming from (in Gmail, not sure what to do with your program)
I presume she clicked on a link or something, I'm not sure but I don't think anybody knows her exact email and password, it's more some ancient spam robot spewing out links endlessly from china or something.
I had to make a separate email just for this, my old email had too many from too many different websites sending to me. I would get hundreds a day and then my email got hacked somehow, I recovered it back and then it was blocked for sending out the same spam I was receiving.
I got it unblocked so I can take off my xbox gamertag on it. The email still receives them but I don't use it anymore.
[QUOTE=FlashFireSix;37083601]I created a spam filter that blocked the address it was coming from (in Gmail, not sure what to do with your program)
I presume she clicked on a link or something, I'm not sure but I don't think anybody knows her exact email and password, it's more some ancient spam robot spewing out links endlessly from china or something.[/QUOTE]
I'm not sure how she would do that either. Her email already has a spam filter system, but it sees these emails as coming from real people. Though she uses Thunderbird to access her email.
She's not the kind of person to click random links, she's not a computer illiterate mom. But her work computer has McAfee so I guess some sort of infection is possible.
Though making a new email is not viable since her email is incredibly vital to her job. (Parking and Transportation supervisor, the university halts if she can't do her job.)
I may ask her to talk to her technical department about this, as incompetent as they are, they're the ones in control of it... :l
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