My Hotmail is sending out a Virus

[Watchoutbelow]

Hi

I am getting replies into my Hotmail junk mail from some very Irate people that I have never heard of, telling me to piss off etc cause a mail with a virus has come from my email account.

I am also getting failure to send notices from large companies with Firewalls, saying it could not deliver mail (that I didn't send)
due to a virus.

I am not sure but I think I recognise the Addreses from some of these Irate people from names on big lists of fowarded jokes.

Is there anyway I can stop this, does any else have a similar problem? Does it come from the computer I use? I have done Virus scans and have detected nothing.

Regards.

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Watchoutbelow,

I am also getting failure to send notices from large companies with Firewalls, saying it could not deliver mail (that I didn't send) due to a virus.

That is part of the SoBig Worm. I have seen it spoof emails from large companies. If you are worried you have the Worm or any other virus for that matter, try an online scan from Trend Micro:

Trend Micro's HouseCall (http://housecall.trendmicro.com/)

Take Care,

Richard

[Watchoutbelow]

Hi Richard

Thank you for the swift excellent response.
I was am starting t get worried that I will end up unintentionally infecting the wrong persons computer, and they will hunt me down and shoot me like a dog!!

[fobotcso]

What Richard was saying is that you/yourPC played no part in the sending of these e-mails. It was simply your address that was used to make it look as though you were responsible.

Mistress Fob's address was used (just the one time) to send a SoBig infected e-mail to the Hilton Hotels Group. Needless to say, the Hilton's automatic filtering process caught it and send her a notification to that effect.

All automatic. I doubt that anyone/thing with warm blood knew anything about it.

[RomeoTangoFoxtrotMike]

Just to followup on the info already given, many viruses these days contain their own mail software, which enables them to self-propagate. They steal email addresses from whereever they can find it on the infected system (the Outlook addressbook is, of course, the favourite) and use them as both the set of recipients for further infection attempts, and as a list of forged send addresses.

Somebody else, who just happened to have your email address, got infected, probably by Sobig-F. That system started emailing losts of other people copies of the worm, some of which will have had your email a ddress forged in them. Hence you get bombarded with messages from any recipient who has got AV software on their mail system (and there's nothing that you can really do about it :uhoh: )

All pretty eveil, huh :mad:

[Naples Air Center, Inc.]

Watchoutbelow,

When you get one of the emails with the SoBig Virus, expand the header information. Inside there you will find the info on the actual originating email address and IP address. You will notice that it is different from the FROM listed on the standard email header.

Take Care,

Richard