Online Security

You may receive an email from your ISP or from a private party that claims you sent a virus – even though you know you didn’t. In this case, one of two things has occurred. Either your system is infected, or your email address has been spoofed. In most cases, your email address has been spoofed. Spoofing occurs when another person’s computer is infected with a worm, and your email address is on that infected computer. The infection adds your email address to the every email message that it sends, making it appear that you have sent the email.

First, scan your system, with an updated virus protection program, to ensure that you are not infected. Once you know that you are not infected, there really isn’t anything else for you to do. You cannot prevent your email address from being spoofed when it is stored on an infected system – that is up to the person with the infected system. They need to update their software and get rid of the infection. Spoofing is also used to send out spam.

While there is nothing that you can do to stop your email address from being spoofed, you can report the incident, by looking at the headers in the spoofed email. The header information usually shows the complete path – or trip that the email took – from start to finish. Your ISP can help you identify where emails originated from, and in most cases, will help you file a complaint with the ISP’s that were involved. This doesn’t mean that they will catch the person that did it, however.