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Receiving SPAM not addressed to me


Pinebear

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Lately, I have begun receiving spam which is addressed to someone other than my wife or me. I base this on seeing a To: that is someone else and that I can not find either my wife's or my address in the expanded headers. Any idea of how this could be accomplished?

I have spoken to my ISP, but to no avail. They insist I have a "worm". All my system SW is as up-to-date as MS provides. I run Norton Internet Security which is also up-to-date and seems to have no problem finding and deleting the many infection attempts. I run AdAware, SpyCop and Antivirus scan at least once a week. Is there anything else I can do to "find" a worm or virus other than what I am already doing? I'll be glad to fall on my sword if something can be found on my computer that is causing this.

Given the above, here are some other facts.

I've been receiving spam for eons. The beginning of receiving of spam addressed to others coincides with a mail server change my ISP made. All of this mail that is not addressed to us IS for others on the same ISP and we do know some of these folks since it is a small ISP. Some of their addresses are in our address book, others are not. For ones that are not, I have searched my hard drive and the only instance of that address is for the offending spam. This is only happening with spam. We have not received any "legitimate" mail addressed to others.

Any thoughts on what is causing this?

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Lately, I have begun receiving spam which is addressed to someone other than my wife or me. I base this on seeing a To: that is someone else and that I can not find either my wife's or my address in the expanded headers. Any idea of how this could be accomplished?

I have spoken to my ISP, but to no avail. They insist I have a "worm".

<snip>

...Groan! You need an ISP that has non-clueless staff!

...The "To" address of the spam has been "forged" and your e-mail address was probably in the "Bcc" which may have been subsequently removed or hidden.

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...Groan! You need an ISP that has non-clueless staff!

...The "To" address of the spam has been "forged" and your e-mail address was probably in the "Bcc" which may have been subsequently removed or hidden.

Will and Steve, you're probably right, I didn't even think about that and should have, given the many legitimate emails I receive that are just like that.

The To: addresses are not forged. They are all legitimate and some, not all, are those of folks we know and correspond with.

I'm beginning to think that that part of this problem is local in that all of these addressed to others have my ISP as the domain.

My ISP, very small, started out as a cable TV outfit and added high speed internet at a much later date. Though they may be up to speed on the TV side, I question just how hot they are when it comes to internet savvy. Thanks.

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<snip>

...The "To" address of the spam has been "forged" <snip>

<snip>

The To: addresses are not forged.

...Egads, what a stupid thing for me to say -- "From" headers are forged, not "To" headers! BLUSH!.
I'm beginning to think that that part of this problem is local in that all of these addressed to others have my ISP as the domain.<snip>
...Not sure what you mean by "local" but I get a lot of spam addressed to others at my MSP (e-Mail Service Provider). My guess would be is that is just how the spamware generates the spam -- the database of e-mail address victims is ordered by e-mail "domain."
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Yeah, its not uncommon for a spammer to send a single message that is TO or BCCed to a number of people at the same ISP. This way, the spammer only has to handle one message, and it is up to the receiving server to put multiple copies in multiple mailboxes.

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