SPAM Question

[FenderPriest]

I looked at my "catch all spam" folder in gmail today, and noticed that a lot of my spam has "me" (including my e-mail address) as the sender. Is this a trick of theirs to not be traced, or has my e-mail account been hacked to be a spam drone? How can I tell?

 

[Seb]

You can look at the message header itself and that should help, but even that's not always helpful.

If you are using Outlook you can right-click on the message and select "option" of "properties" depending on the version. It will look complicated, but if you look closely at the "From" fields, you can figure it out.

Just keep in mind, if it is SPAM, the "From" fields will probably be inaccurate, but they should show someone's address or server other then yours. The spammers usually bounce emails off of open mail servers.

[edit: Sorry I just noticed you're using gmail. The principles are the same, but I'm not sure how you can examine the header info in gmail]

 

[Dwimble]

That's common and doesn't mean anything. That's just what the spammer puts in the "From:" header of the message, but doesn't really have anything to do with who actually sent it. It would be similar, say, to someone mailing you a letter from another state but putting your address as the return address on the envelope. The Postmark would still show that the letter originated from somewhere else.

Email messages have other headers that you don't normally see unless you view the source or properties of the message. Those usually provide more technical information about what computers on the internet actually relayed the message. They probably wouldn't mean anything to you if you looked at them however, because they contain technical info.

Don't worry about it at all.

 

[FenderPriest]

Ah, thanks. I was concerned that my e-mail was being used as a mule to send out spam to others.