[OT] Think my PC might be pwned..?
 

Strangest thing... for the last few weeks I]ve been getting a hell of a lot of bounceback emails that suggest that mI've been sending out shedloads of spam. None of it seems to be from any address I actually use. Here's an example header of a mail apparently sent form my machine, or at least from my account:

<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
From: "Tatum N. Florence" &lt;cnqlad@dogscoff.plus.com&gt;
To: </pre><hr />recipient's address removed<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
Subject: That wasn't such a surprise.

Your message cannot be delivered to the following recipients: </pre><hr />

Note that I am not 'Tatum N Florence, I never use cnqlad@dogscoff.plus.com, in fact I never send anything from dogscoff.plus.com - It's all mapped to dogscoff.co.uk

This kind of indicates to me that the problem isn't on my machine- it could be either (a) someone has somehow hacked my ISP details and is logging on as me from another machine somewhere else entirely and sending email from my account or (b) they aren't using my account at all, just setting the reply-to to look like I sent them, when in fact they came from a totally unconnected address.

AVG, adaware, spybot scans come up clean. I use firefox rather than IE and keep spywareblaster up to date, so I ought to be pretty clean. Anyone know where to go or what to do find out what's going on?

Re: [OT] Think my PC might be pwned..?
 

The "From:" can also be faked.

Re: [OT] Think my PC might be pwned..?
 

Does the full header info not have more info about the actual originating machine?

Is dogscoff.plus.com even a domain name you use in any way?

You could put a monitor program on your net traffic to see if your machines are actually sending out any rogue email.

And/or ask your ISP to check into it.

My guess however is your name is just in someone's random database of names to spoof as, perhaps even from web search data. Some of us sometimes google you to find your site rather than looking up the URL, so web spider bots will dredge up your addresses and abuse them.

PvK