"Identity theft... what can I do?" Topic

OK, this is the situation…

I have had an eMail account I have used for me yahoo groups for some years now.

Now for a little over two weeks now someone is sending spam mail from an account that mimics mine. I am sure it is not send directly from mine since the signature does not match and I have changed the password (yes I am sure there are no Trojans or similar stuff on my PC to monitor these changes).

I have had this happen once in the past, but then it was only fr a day and only once. But now I am getting at least 100 failed deliver notifications per day.

All the spam the send is aimed at Russian addresses and always in Russian language (I assume so since it is in cyrillic letters).

Is there any thing I can do about it? I do not want to close this account and create a new one since it would mean changing the details on more then 20 yahoo groups, my eMail program and informing roughly 200 people that they will no longer be able to reach me via that address!

Any advise is welcome!

Cheers,

Burkhard

P.S.: Do not advise me to hire the Russian Mafia to solve my problem… I do not see that as an option!

The best thing that you can do is create an e-mail sort rule that dumps all of these into the trash. I have had similar things happen to me over the years. This sort of thing passes and this is the best solution that I have found to deal with it.

20 Groups to update?

Well perhaps the clean break from the old one is the best idea. You'll continue to get the failed delivery messages and ppl will not know if a message is from your valid account or the spoof one.

Eventually you might have Yahoo shut down that email account anyway (if too much traffic in the form of failed delivery messages clogs up the system). The spoofer is probably not even on the Yahoo network.

It may pass in time, but it all depends on the spoofer rather than anything you can do.

They are probably just spoofing your email account (plugging in a someone else's email address to mask the real sender).

The only 'real' problem is that your email address will go on a spam list and it may get auto-blocked by some ISPs.

Regards, the Gorb

If your own account is not doing the sending, then it isn't quite "identity theft" as commonly defined. It IS email spoofing, as the spammer's emailer is simply tacking an address from their harvested list into the "From" spot to hopefully prevent their own identity being discovered. The bounces you are getting are probably mostly from domains that are not quite "smart" enough to detect the spam and simply delete it.

If you know email headers, or have a friend that does, the headers can often be decoded to tell you where the email *really* came from. You can then send email to that domain (or ask Yahoo to do so), typically to "postmaster@" or "abuse@" and inform them that they are hosting spammers and identity thieves. Smart domain admins will shut down the offenders immediately. Even if the domain is completely crooked, such emails tells them that *someone* has tracked them, and they may take steps to not come to your attention again.

I had this a few years ago and I was receiving tens of bounced emails a day and a number of irate complaints. I forwarded the bounced mails with headers to my ISP and hotmail and they stopped in fairly short order.

Yet another reason to hate spammers.

it is a newer form of spam. While it may appear that they are being sent as you I would doubt it. Is your address posting to groups as you but with the wrong signature? If so then your email address is compromised and you should change it (as well as do some good sweeps of your system.)

I think this is called a joe job.

I am thinking about having a new disposable email every year.

One day someone will come up with a solution to these nasty people – even now they catch and prosecute the odd one.