General Windows Bot/Spam question.

I received a spam message from an acquaintance's aol email account today and emailed him to let him know his PC might be compromised. He answered back that his main machine is a Mac but he did turn on his PC on Sunday to send out an email. Is it possible it came from his PC even though he last had it on 3 days ago? Dave

No Dave
You got spoofed. The spammers steal email addresses and then send out spam making it appear that the email was sent by another.
They also can get into your email, with the password and actually send from your email, but not from your computer if it was not on.
http://www.windowsecurity.com/articles/Email-Spoofing.html

I see. It was just strange since we hadn't emailed each other in over 7 years and I don't even have him in my address book on my new system. Thanks for the info! Dave

His address book was stolen too
He went to someplace like facebook (dont know if its true with facebook, probably isn't)
and everyone in his book gets spam. Some sites actually steal the names in your address book
Not quite the same as spoofing, but not sent from his computer

Happy Holidays my friend.

Happy Holidays to you too, Rich. Dave