Why do I get 100s of sent email failures without sending a single email?

Question

This has been going on for about a week now and my antivirus checks clean.

Answer 1

It's junk mail, not a virus. I get delivery failure notices all the time in my hotmail account in which I haven't sent an email out of for years.

Answer 2

You probably opened a virus contained email and that is why emails are sent automatically from your account, few days back there was this virus which can automatically send emails to your address book contacts , and i am sure thats the reason why you get those 100 of sent emails , don't worry, you just need to download a updated anti virus and it will solve the problem, try this,

http://housecall.trendmicro.com/

its the best anti virus, even hotmail uses it to scan their emails.

Good luck!

Answer 3

Either your computer or another computer that has your e mail address on it, is badly infected with a virus to allow another person to send out thousands of spam e mails a day.

"In 2003, spam investigators saw a radical change in the way spammers sent spam. Rather than searching the global network for exploitable services such as open relays and proxies, spammers began creating "services" of their own. By commissioning computer viruses designed to deploy proxies and other spam-sending tools, spammers could harness hundreds of thousands of end-user computers."

"Most of the major Windows e-mail viruses of 2003, including the Sobig and Mimail virus families, functioned as spammer viruses: viruses designed expressly to make infected computers available as spamming tools"
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/spam_%28e-m...

All you can do is be sure that your computer is free of virus, worms and trojans. Here is a good clean-up procedure if your currently are lacking one.

1. Scan for virus and remove (free online scan) with BitDefender

http://www.bitdefender.com/site/home/...

2. Scan for trojans and remove (free online scan) with Ewido

http://www.ewido.net/en/

3. Scan for ad/spyware and remove (free download) with Spybot Search & Destroy

http://www.safer-networking.org/en/spybo...

If your computer is clean, then all you can do is wait until the owner of the infected computer that is sending spam with your address relalizes what is going on and cleans-up his computer.

For further infomation you can Google the word "botnet"

Good luck

Answer 4

someone is using ur email ID, without necessarily logging into your account ... I guess someone who you sent email to before has one of these mass email mailing viruses on their machine ... check out this link http://antivirus.about.com/cs/virusencyclopedia/p/blebla.htm .. it has an example of what Im talking about ..

Answer 5

If you open them, then your computer will get a virus. That is what it sounds like are e mails that contain viruses, UNLESS someone has your e mail and password

Answer 6

I'd have an online virus checker scan for a virus, perhaps your virus protection has been infected.
This one helped me find a virus, after it disabled my virus protection.

Answer 7

it happened to me too turns out my cousin was on tons of adult sites and its a spi ware thing you can change it in settings on your comp or have best buy geeks to go or geek squad fix it.