Email Spam - Have I Got a Problem?

Just logged on to my personal email account for the first time in a couple of days.

Apart from the usual Viagra offers and a note from Barney Army asking a question I couldn't POSSIBLY answer, there were about 400 messages entitled 'Delivery Failure'.

Clearly someone has used my email address to send hundreds of emails to unsuspecting folk (none of whom I know) offering a range of mens health services or products.

Should I be worried?

My instinct is that I don't need to worry about my own security. This doesn't mean that my aunt has been used, just that some dirty spammer has entered my email into the 'from' field of his account set-up and sent the emails from his own account.

Why would they do this though?

I have my own domain, so an email sent to anything@mydomain will get to the same acocunt. I therefore use different a 'anything' each time I register for something. The address used wasn't the NOOL one, or any I use for anything specific. In fact, most domains will have an email address with this 'anything', if you know what I mean.

I'd appreciate any advice that any of you may have to rid myself of this problem. At best, it will be very inconvenient to have to delete 400 emails each time I log on. It's bad enough deleting the 20 or so stupid emails a day that get past my spam filter.

More upsettingly, the domain I use is just my own real name. I don't want my name to by associated with this shit.

Could be worse, I suppose, but a worrying thing to see.

BIGINSPAM

the slightlynarrow inbox goes through these convulsions from time to time too...had an enormous run of mails from "admin" or"security" etc @ slightlynarrow, to nool @ slightlynarrow. Lots of them asking for things like billing updates.

It was nothing at my end obviously, not running the great viral peetree dish that is windows. It's probably not at your end either in this case , but since you DO own a zombie-able system...a good going over with some antivirus would be advised.

I had a shedload of those "delivery failure" ones in my gmail account this morning as well. Does my head in, all this spam.

It's not even on my computer though - I can access the mail account online, which is what I did this afternoon.

I've not turned my own PC on for nearly a week and I really hope nobody else has!

Hopefully just one of those really really annoying things that pisses you off from time to time.

pain in the arse innit.

got one this morning from susanconsole5@virgilio.it. whoever & whatever the fuck that is. so just deleted without opening.

J.A.K wrote: pain in the arse innit. got one this morning from susanconsole5@virgilio.it. whoever & whatever the fuck that is. so just deleted without opening.

sure that she's emailed here too, but today has been quite clear. instead of the usual don't open just delete - tried to reply to one of them w/ a one line- immediately remove this address from your list-type thing. of course nicely said. but truly 15 minutes later got back the --not found - ' mail could not be delivered response. hmm.