Spammer forged my email addy

[GPolkaDot]

Apparently a spammer has forged my yahoo email addy for his mailings. For a week now I have been getting tons of returned mail that I did not send out. My antivirus program not only runs daily but updates daily as well. I even did a "second opinion" online virus scan and check clean. I only use the yahoo webmail so would not have it set up in Outlook or such. I do not publish that addy. The only other idea I have is that some "friend" of mine has a virus on their computer and it is accessing my email addy from their address book. I didn't think it would do any good to report postmaster returned mail reports so any ideas how I can stop this short of changing my email address.

[Miss Betsy]

You are probably correct that your email address was picked up via a virus on someone's machine. The spammer is forging your address in the return path of the spam being sent. Some out of touch server admins still accept email and compose a nondeliverable message and send it to the return path. There is a longer explanation in the FAQ under 'Why Am I Getting All These Bounces?'

You can report these misdirected bounces to a forged From: through spamcop. And the spamcop report (and possibly blocklisting) does alert those server admins who are still accepting email and then sending an email nondeliverable notice to the forged return path that this practice is just as annoying as spam. Some of them do change their methods after being reported through spamcop.

You can't 'stop' it; however, usually it doesn't last very long. The spammer chooses another victim to forge and you no longer get the bounces.

Miss Betsy

[GPolkaDot]

Thank you