Can I tell if my address book has been compromised?

[TVeblen]

I recently sent and received a series of emails to a colleague (I use Thunderbird, he accesses Verizon Mail online).
The gentleman claims that 'immediately' afterward he became deluged with spam mail.
He rarely uses that particular email address, I use mine constantly. No one else I correspond with has noted any change in behavior, just this guy. He is fairly security savvy - I doubt he would do the usual stupid things to invite spam.

The only thing that occurs to me is that something copied my address book (and only sent spam to him - huh?)
But that got me to thinking: would there be a way to tell if I was compromised in that way?
I run Avast! (free) and the Mail Sheild is on.

Thanks for any thoughts or ideas.

 

[maxie]

Hi there .. If this has only affected one person .. I doubt that you have much to worry about .. If there was some thing wrong i am pretty sure you would notice it .. Things like People you know are getting emails from you that you didn't send. .. Also there are outgoing messages in your Sent, Drafts or Outbox folder that you didn't create or send... And maybe your account folders (Sent, Deleted, Spam, Inbox, etc.) have been emptied or deleted ...

 

[TVeblen]

Hey Maxie - thanks. That's what I was thinking, but it made me wonder if there was any way you could tell.

 

[Callender]

Add yourself to your address book

If you own more than one email address add the other one to your address book in the account that you suspect might have been compromised. That way if your account is sending out spam - you'll see it in your inbox in your other account.

 

[ThrashZone]

Hi,
What type of spam is the guy getting ?
Offers for Avast

I would tend to agree that If he's the only one getting the spam it's most likely on his end,
Usually corruption would send to all your contacts not just one,
Cheers.

 

[TVeblen]

If you own more than one email address add the other one to your address book in the account that you suspect might have been compromised. That way if your account is sending out spam - you'll see it in your inbox in your other account.

Like it! Will do.

 

[TVeblen]

Hi,
What type of spam is the guy getting ?
Offers for Avast

I would tend to agree that If he's the only one getting the spam it's most likely on his end,
Usually corruption would send to all your contacts not just one,
Cheers.

Yeah, the key here is that "this is an account he doesn't usually use". So he starts up after a month and the inbox fills up. My fault.

 

[ThrashZone]

An easy test is to make a new account and send an email to it and see what flows to the spam folder or inbox,
Cheers.

 

[UsernameIssues]

I'm going to jump in here with two stories:

The first story is pretty much as you mentioned. A Verizon account that was not used (forced on the user by Verizon as an ISP). The person that I support wanted to move away from Yahoo. They asked about the wisdom of using their Verizon e-mail address/account. The inbox for that account was pretty much empty - just some junk mail from Verizon.

Since I had read in Verizon's forums about waves of sudden spam, I told them about that and several other negatives about using their Verizon e-mail account. As a test, I sent them one single e-mail from a newly create Yahoo account. Within 24 hours that Verizon inbox was getting spam for all sorts of stuff (which we did not delete). Within a week, the inbox was full.

Was this Yahoo's issue? Did the e-mail flow thru a compromised server?


The second story is a bit different. It is my Verizon e-mail account. Just like the first story, the inbox was relatively empty - just some junk mail from Verizon. Then I used the account for the first time to sign up for a forum. I used the Verizon e-mail account mainly to see if I would start getting spam like the person in the first story. Yep, the spam started that same day as the first use. But it was not as bad as in the first story - it took months to fill the inbox.

As a test, I informed the forum's admin about the spam and I asked if I could create a second forum account using a Hotmail e-mail address. The admin was fine with that. There was no spam sent to that Hotmail account.

I created some other e-mail aliases for my Verizon account and just let them sit. They stayed empty... not even junk mail from Verizon. I'm at a loss as to how/why this stuff happens - and frankly, I don't care to dig into it. Verizon is not that great at helping their customers with such things.

 

[TVeblen]

An easy test is to make a new account and send an email to it and see what flows to the spam folder or inbox,
Cheers.

I sent and received mail from 5 different accounts, 2 different ISP's. Not a spec of spam.

 

[TVeblen]

I'm going to jump in here with two stories:

The first story is pretty much as you mentioned. A Verizon account that was not used (forced on the user by Verizon as an ISP). The person that I support wanted to move away from Yahoo. They asked about the wisdom of using their Verizon e-mail address/account. The inbox for that account was pretty much empty - just some junk mail from Verizon.

Since I had read in Verizon's forums about waves of sudden spam, I told them about that and several other negatives about using their Verizon e-mail account. As a test, I sent them one single e-mail from a newly create Yahoo account. Within 24 hours that Verizon inbox was getting spam for all sorts of stuff (which we did not delete). Within a week, the inbox was full.

Was this Yahoo's issue? Did the e-mail flow thru a compromised server?


The second story is a bit different. It is my Verizon e-mail account. Just like the first story, the inbox was relatively empty - just some junk mail from Verizon. Then I used the account for the first time to sign up for a forum. I used the Verizon e-mail account mainly to see if I would start getting spam like the person in the first story. Yep, the spam started that same day as the first use. But it was not as bad as in the first story - it took months to fill the inbox.

As a test, I informed the forum's admin about the spam and I asked if I could create a second forum account using a Hotmail e-mail address. The admin was fine with that. There was no spam sent to that Hotmail account.

I created some other e-mail aliases for my Verizon account and just let them sit. They stayed empty... not even junk mail from Verizon. I'm at a loss as to how/why this stuff happens - and frankly, I don't care to dig into it. Verizon is not that great at helping their customers with such things.

That is interesting. I suspect that it could have something to do with the ISP's spam filtering system, as well as the user's filters. I use Comcast for business email accounts and Comcast seems to be fairly aggressive in filtering spam. I do not recall if that was a setting I chose long ago, or it is automatic. But other than spam from known offenders - sites I have bought something from - I get nothing.

 

[TVeblen]

I may be exonerated.
http://www.sevenforums.com/security...over-500-000-computers-daily.html#post2724325