Is your friends and contacts asks why you keep e-mailing them some “enhancement pill” or “inappropriate ads” ? If so it could be one of the following things:
- You may have a virus.
- Spoofing.
If you have a virus
Basically, viruses spread through electronic mail attachments. If you open an email attachment which has virus/worm, your e-mail virus mails itself to people in your address book. If your contacts open your email “message” with an attached virus, it mails to all the contacts in their address book and the virus will spread endlessly. This continues to occur until the worm is removed.
If you are experiencing the symptoms of a virus, update your anti-virus software and scan your computer for possible virus. You have to update your software with the latest available update because anti-virus software cannot detect new viruses without an update. Tip: Always have the a recent version of antivirus software on your computer and run anti-virus scans frequently.
If you don’t have any anti-virus software, check this page for free antivirus software and a list of anti-virus software providers.
Spoofing
Spoofing is when a spammer sends out e-mails using your electronic mail address in the From: field.
Spoofing is a sort of trick spammer uses to send emails using your email address in the “From” field. Actually spammers don’t use your email account to send emails, it will originate from the spammer’s email account using their server. But, it will look like mail originated from your email account. If you don’t find those kind of spam emails in your “Sent Folder” it means you have been spoofed.
Unfortunately, there is no real way to prevent spoofing and you can’t do much to stop once it starts.