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Why is Outlook Express forwarding my messages 90 times?

14 years ago

I forwarded 3 messages yesterday from a great-nephew that I hardly know. Now the people that I forwarded these messages to are telling me that they recieved the same message 89 & 90 times.This is the first time I've recieved mail from him and the same messages that I forwarded from him came to ME only once.

I run Avast nightly on this computer and also in all mail coming in. If it's a virus on his end why didn't my computer catch it? I'm assuming it's his mail that's infected because I forwarded things from other people and it only happened with the mail that I forwarded from him.

I'm using XP with IE-7 and Outlook Express.

Thanks so very much for your time and hope someone can help.

Have a nice Valentine Day.

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Comments (5)

genes
14 years ago
One of those messages that you "forwarded" (which you should never do)probably had a nasty enclosed. It could be a trojan rather than a virus. Do you have an antispyware program on your computer like "Malwarebytes" its free.
Suggest you download it, install it, update it then run it. Another good one which complements Malwarebytes is Spywareblaster, Its always running in the background and keeps these nasties from loading. You just have to update it weekly or so and its free as well.
What service package of XP do you have (hopefully XPSP3)
To find out right click on "my computer" select properties and that info should be in the box that appears
mike_kaiser_gw
14 years ago
Assuming your relative didn't intend to send anything malicious, it's pretty hard to get a virus via email these days. Messages are typically scanned by the sender's ISP, your ISP, and the AV software you have installed locally. Then when you forwarded the message it was again scanned by your ISP and the recipient's ISP. I'd be more inclined to think it was just some kind of glitch on the part of your ISP or you picked up some kind of infection not related to the original email.
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I have never heard of an ISP that told you what to use as your email address. Are you talking about your ISP when you say your provider or something else? When I set up our comcast I set up an email address similar to what you are saying with some initals and part of the name. I never use it but set it up just in case I should need one and to get any correspondence from comcast should they email me. I later decided to tie that email account to my ebay account and ebay came back and said that email address was already in use by someone. HUMMM well how can that be? So I created a different one at comcast and used it. Fast forward to last week when just for the heck of it I decided to go check on those comcast addys to see if there was any mail. Well that first one had a ton of spam in it and several emails from someone with the same initals/name and it looks like he also has that same email address. It has not been an issue for me since I just do not use that address but I was able to open all those emails of his and they were business related and some were legal. I am sure he would not be happy about that I know I would not be happy. I have no idea how comcast let that happen, each email address should be unique and never be allowed once someone has locked it in. the other 2nd comcast one I set up and ended up tieing to my ebay had zero spam and only email from ebay in it. very weird and sounds like maybe something very similar is happening in your case. If so the ISP should be able to check those 2 accounts and see why exactly that is happening. Definitely check your full headers and get all the routing info and let them have that info so they can sort it out. you may have to ask how to show full headers each email client is different, I have not used outlook express in ages.
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exgm
14 years ago
It could be the ISP or one of the recipient's own machines.
Bear in mind that malware can set up it's own SMTP server on a machine and start creating output.
See:
internetnews.com/dev-news/article.php/2234041
An independent web based malware scan might be prudent for all involved.
eg:
f-secure.com/en_EMEA/security/security-lab/tools-and-services/online-scanner/index.html
heidiho
Original Author
14 years ago
Thanks for all the help you have given me. I will take all advice and do what ya'll suggested to clean up this mess.
Thanks again and have a nice Sunday.
heidiho
Original Author
14 years ago
genes:
I have XP Service Pack 3.
I'm using Microsoft Security Essentials that's updated weekly on my desktop and Avast on my laptop.
I use the same email address on both as my primary.
I will take your advice and download Malbytes & Spywareblaster and run them both and run updates.
Thanks again for your help and quick response.

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