Holy Crap. .Mac nightmare hijacking.
My wife's friend sent this today. Suggestions?
[quote] Hi Everyone,
I just want to let you know that I have been having problems with my email account. Apparently, someone has "hijacked" my email account and is sending out thousands of spam messages, making it seem as though they are originating from my account. Please be advised that this is not a virus, I am told, but some hacker somewhere. Thus far, I have 3,245 messages in my in box. Apple support has not been responsive to my request for help, saying first that someone in the house must be sending out email without my knowing, (Well, I guess I will have to have a talk with [my 13 month old daughter] about her computer addiction.) and then telling me I will just have to change my email address. So far, I have been receiving bounced messages, messages from servers saying that I am now banned for sending spam, messages from irate people telling me that they hate me for sending them spam, an auto reply from President Bush's office, messages from [my tutoring student's parents] telling me that pornography was sent to a child's account, out of office auto replies that just keep sending, and weird sick-o's that want to meet me. The moral of my story, beware! Someone at any time could do this to you, and the support people don't really care. (In fact, I think that they found it amusing.) At this point, I am now able to send messages to some places (if I haven't been banned for sending spam yet) but am unable to receive messages. Who knows when this will all be worked out. No one at the .mac accounts seems to care...
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[quote] Hi Everyone,
I just want to let you know that I have been having problems with my email account. Apparently, someone has "hijacked" my email account and is sending out thousands of spam messages, making it seem as though they are originating from my account. Please be advised that this is not a virus, I am told, but some hacker somewhere. Thus far, I have 3,245 messages in my in box. Apple support has not been responsive to my request for help, saying first that someone in the house must be sending out email without my knowing, (Well, I guess I will have to have a talk with [my 13 month old daughter] about her computer addiction.) and then telling me I will just have to change my email address. So far, I have been receiving bounced messages, messages from servers saying that I am now banned for sending spam, messages from irate people telling me that they hate me for sending them spam, an auto reply from President Bush's office, messages from [my tutoring student's parents] telling me that pornography was sent to a child's account, out of office auto replies that just keep sending, and weird sick-o's that want to meet me. The moral of my story, beware! Someone at any time could do this to you, and the support people don't really care. (In fact, I think that they found it amusing.) At this point, I am now able to send messages to some places (if I haven't been banned for sending spam yet) but am unable to receive messages. Who knows when this will all be worked out. No one at the .mac accounts seems to care...
<hr></blockquote>
Comments
Tell him to change his password, for safety's sake. And then keep pushing for Apple to help. This is Apple's problem as much as it is your friend's.
Jason
<strong>It's fairly easy to falsify from and reply-to fields.</strong><hr></blockquote>Splinemodel is right. In fact, this is how a number of the self-propogating e-mail viruses get spread around. The virus looks at the victims address book and sends out e-mails that forge the from field and *appear* to come from the people in the address book. Check the return path and you'll see which address really sent it.
[ 01-31-2003: Message edited by: Brad ]</p>
<strong>It's fairly easy to falsify from and reply-to fields. Tell your friends to send you the routing information.</strong><hr></blockquote>
I said that first!