www.ultimatehandyman.co.uk

I received an email from a mate, which contained spam and a link to a web address, flogging stuff in China.

When I asked him what was going on, he didn't know anything about it.

It will be from another computer that is infected and your mate's email address is in that computers address book.

Nothing to worry about as long as you binned it and did not click on any links.

Run a Quick Scan with MBAM to be sure. (Sounded Irish then)

dave

Did all that Dave and clean.

How would it get my address, or would it be a mutual friend/computer.

i got one from dewy was it t from him scruff !!
if so its his email list

thescruff wrote: How would it get my address, or would it be a mutual friend/computer.

It is not always the address book but emails with dozens of addresses showing.

A lot of the problem is down to friends who forward emails with jokes etc onto all their friends in the address book and leave the recipients addresses as 'cc' instead of 'bcc'

I often get a joke email from family who justs forwards the email that he received and it will have about 100 peoples address on it as it was sent around the net with eveyone being labelled as 'cc'.
If I forward any, I first click Forward and then delete all the addresses and the message subs that are not part of the joke, then I address it to me in the To box and put every other address that I want to send it to in the 'bcc' box so that no one sees who else I sent it to.

cc means carbon copy the message to this address
bcc means blind carbon copy the message but with no other name showing.

A spambot installed on an infected computer only needs to get its hands on a couple of these emails and it will send its spam addressed from
any one of the addresses to everyone of the addresses, knowing that people will not have filters set to block emails from the name it is pretending to be.

dave

I've had the same form customers with Hotmail accounts I seem to recall a number of them were hacked. I just bin them and let my customer know.

Leo explains the cc / bcc email address thing better than I did:

http://ask-leo.com/how_does_using_bcc_h ... _spam.html

dave

Been doing this for years and years now ever since I got a rollicking from a pal back in 1999 or thereabouts. He explained how messy, lazy and down right rude it was to not clean up an email and use bcc if i wanted to fwd it. Also always remove 're' as well.

If I could change anything that people send me it would be that one thing. Sometimes I had to scroll for miles to get past the dozen or so fwds it contained to finally arrive at the point of the mail.

Mozzy

What happened to you scruff is called ghosting.

When someones email address is ghosted. It means a 3rd party has established that an email address is valid, and will now begin to send messages pretending to be from that email account, usually advertising their own sites or services.

This spam can be confusing and annoying, since the email appears to come from a legitimate address, only upon reading does one discover the spam content. At which point the SPAMMERs work is done, they've got their message out there.

Email Spamming is now a days not an a big job. Now a days many of the boots are doing these activities. Mail Address is now not only used for the personal benefits but also for the benefits of the advertisers, so never hesitate deleting the spam mails with out any fear.