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Castaras
2012-08-07, 12:36 PM
My parents got an email from a strange email address (one completely unrelated to me and that I never made - on yahoo, if that helps.), but the sender's id was my real name, and had it titled as "For [mum's name]". Had a link in it that we're not clicking.

Has anyone had anything similar happen to them? I've had a quick look online but haven't found anything pointing to a case like this.

Maxios
2012-08-07, 12:37 PM
Virus. If they open, they're going to get it a virus and it's going to send an email to their friends. My mom got the same thing once.

Absol197
2012-08-07, 12:40 PM
I've never had anything like that happen, but do you and/or your mom frequent Facebook or other social media sites like that? I don't think it would be that difficult to learn both your names from that, which would then allow a scammer/jerk trying to give her a virus to make such a fake e-mail address.

Hmm...Is your mom's e-mail address related to her name at all?

EDIT: Either way, I would agree that not clicking the link is the best thing you can do.

EDIT 2: Actually, don't listen to me. Listen to these other nice people who know a lot more about computers than I do :smallsmile: .

WarKitty
2012-08-07, 12:54 PM
Virus. If they open, they're going to get it a virus and it's going to send an email to their friends. My mom got the same thing once.

Ditto. Spoofing the "from" address is not hard. It probably pulled your name from her contact list.

Castaras
2012-08-07, 12:58 PM
Yeah, we had assumed it was a spam / virus link so deleted it. I was more wanting to know how worried I should be that it picked up my name for it.

Kitty: How would such a spam email have access to my mum's contact lists in the first place? Or is this a common thing to happen?

Rawhide
2012-08-07, 01:40 PM
Yeah, we had assumed it was a spam / virus link so deleted it. I was more wanting to know how worried I should be that it picked up my name for it.

Kitty: How would such a spam email have access to my mum's contact lists in the first place? Or is this a common thing to happen?

Doesn't need your or your mothers list, just a random mutual friend.

Tyndmyr
2012-08-07, 02:02 PM
My parents got an email from a strange email address (one completely unrelated to me and that I never made - on yahoo, if that helps.), but the sender's id was my real name, and had it titled as "For [mum's name]". Had a link in it that we're not clicking.

Has anyone had anything similar happen to them? I've had a quick look online but haven't found anything pointing to a case like this.

It's called email spoofing. It's really easy, if you've got access to the right information, and lots of less-savory individuals and ahem, businesses do it.

In general, any such thing should be deleted immediately, and I'd take a glance at security for my account, just in the off chance that was the way they got the info. It probably wasn't, but it never hurts to be sure.

Dr.Epic
2012-08-07, 02:05 PM
Virus. If they open, they're going to get it a virus and it's going to send an email to their friends. My mom got the same thing once.

Yes. This. When I first read the title "Weird Email" my mind immediately went to it's probably a virus. I personally would never click on an email link unless I know who sent it.

GrlumpTheElder
2012-08-08, 06:31 PM
Yes. This. When I first read the title "Weird Email" my mind immediately went to it's probably a virus. I personally would never click on an email link unless I know who sent it.
And even then use your judgement. The amount of times I receive emails from people in my contact who have clicked on a link in an email they received which has subsequently sent itself to everyone on their contact lists...

comicshorse
2012-08-09, 11:23 AM
And even then use your judgement. The amount of times I receive emails from people in my contact who have clicked on a link in an email they received which has subsequently sent itself to everyone on their contact lists...

Yep I got caught by an e-mail from my niece which linked to a virus which copied itself onto my computer and then sent itself to everyone of my friends.

Gravitron5000
2012-08-09, 11:41 AM
You think that's odd. I've gotten a number of e-mail messages which appear to be sent to me by me. You would think that the spammers would realize that I would remember sending myself something. Then again, who is more trustworthy to me than me? :smalltongue: This is not even isolated. Around 10% of the spam I received seems to be sent to me by me. It boggles the mind.

Hbgplayer
2012-08-11, 01:17 PM
Well, I was the victim of a hacked email once.
I logged onto my primary email account and found a couple email from my secondary account that I know I didn't send, so I logged onto that one and found out that someone/thing sent ads for certain Male Enhancement drugs to everyone on my contacts list, which included my grandparents, a couple teachers, and much to my horror, the USNA (US Naval Academy) admissions team, my local USNA rep, and my Congressman (needed a congressional appointment to the Naval Academy.

Zherog
2012-08-11, 02:18 PM
I've never had anything like that happen, but do you and/or your mom frequent Facebook or other social media sites like that? I don't think it would be that difficult to learn both your names from that, which would then allow a scammer/jerk trying to give her a virus to make such a fake e-mail address.

I recently read an article - forget where - about exactly that. Spammers are finding it worthwhile to mine Facebook to look for connections and email addresses. In many cases they can even determine relationships. They then piece all that together, forge the email header, and send the spam.

Miklus
2012-08-15, 12:31 PM
At work I got a very long and detailed e-mail warning me that when the ufos land, they are full of demons, not angels as you might believe. It is, in fact, NOT the rapture. Rather, the demon wants to eat you flesh. So don't go on board. You have been warned.

Bulldog Psion
2012-08-15, 12:56 PM
For a while, I got a lot weird e-mails -- from myself. Creeped me out that they were able to do that. :smalleek:

Siosilvar
2012-08-15, 04:17 PM
For a while, I got a lot weird e-mails -- from myself. Creeped me out that they were able to do that. :smalleek:

It's pretty trivial to fake the "from" field, as people have said before. The other email headers, not so much, since they're added by the mail server, but most people don't check those and most programs don't display them by default.

For example, here's the headers from a spam email I got the other day.

Return-Path: <[email protected]>
Received: from [my email server]
by [my email server]; Fri, 10 Aug 2012 13:12:02 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from Robert-PC ([108.175.182.49])
by [my email server]
for <[me]>; Fri, 10 Aug 2012 13:11:52 -0400 (EDT)
Received: by wrtwapw.net id hnt21m0ce83b for <[me]>; Fri, 10 Aug 2012 01:08:08 -0500 (envelope-from <[email protected]>)
Received: from wrtwapw.net by web.wrtwapw.net with local (Mailing Server 4.69)
id 82512699-997128-82/./PV3Xa/WiSKhnO+7kCTI+xNiKJsH/rC/
for [email protected]; Fri, 10 Aug 2012 01:04:04 -0500
Message-Id: <[email protected]>
From: "Canadian Pharmacy" <[email protected]>
To: [me]
Subject: Canadian Pharmacy: buy now Viagra Cialis !!
Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2012 01:03:47 -0500
MIME-Version: 1.0
Origin: 108.175.182.49
Content-Type: text/plain;
X-ELNK-Received-Info: spv=1;
X-ELNK-AV: 0

The "from" address is [email protected], but Yahoo never touched the email, as you can see in the 'Received's. (I've blanked out my email server, but it's not Yahoo.)

So if there's an email you're not sure about, you can check those (Google for your mail program / webmail provider or poke around in the options to figure out how) to see if it's legitimate or not. Most of them are pretty obvious to tell apart, though.

The Glyphstone
2012-08-15, 05:04 PM
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Maxios
2012-08-15, 07:30 PM
It's pretty trivial to fake the "from" field, as people have said before. The other email headers, not so much, since they're added by the mail server, but most people don't check those and most programs don't display them by default.

For example, here's the headers from a spam email I got the other day.

Return-Path: <[email protected]>
Received: from [my email server]
by [my email server]; Fri, 10 Aug 2012 13:12:02 -0400 (EDT)
Received: from Robert-PC ([108.175.182.49])
by [my email server]
for <[me]>; Fri, 10 Aug 2012 13:11:52 -0400 (EDT)
Received: by wrtwapw.net id hnt21m0ce83b for <[me]>; Fri, 10 Aug 2012 01:08:08 -0500 (envelope-from <[email protected]>)
Received: from wrtwapw.net by web.wrtwapw.net with local (Mailing Server 4.69)
id 82512699-997128-82/./PV3Xa/WiSKhnO+7kCTI+xNiKJsH/rC/
for [email protected]; Fri, 10 Aug 2012 01:04:04 -0500
Message-Id: <[email protected]>
From: "Canadian Pharmacy" <[email protected]>
To: [me]
Subject: Canadian Pharmacy: buy now Viagra Cialis !!
Date: Fri, 10 Aug 2012 01:03:47 -0500
MIME-Version: 1.0
Origin: 108.175.182.49
Content-Type: text/plain;
X-ELNK-Received-Info: spv=1;
X-ELNK-AV: 0

The "from" address is [email protected], but Yahoo never touched the email, as you can see in the 'Received's. (I've blanked out my email server, but it's not Yahoo.)

So if there's an email you're not sure about, you can check those (Google for your mail program / webmail provider or poke around in the options to figure out how) to see if it's legitimate or not. Most of them are pretty obvious to tell apart, though.

HOLY CRAP! Norton kept saying earlier that it was blocking that email!

Siosilvar
2012-08-16, 01:12 AM
HOLY CRAP! Norton kept saying earlier that it was blocking that email!

I'm not surprised. The whole point of spam is sending the same email to a whole bunch of people, after all.