why messages to me from me?

[Phil]

I've received two emails in the last 2 weeks that were marked as coming from my own email address and I did NOT send these emails to myself. The subject line of both messages is "hi" and there is no message text whatsoever. I'm using Mozilla Thunderbird and have a Yahoo (AT&T) account. I've copied below, the full info about the messaqe that I can retrieve. What is causing this strange phenomenon and can I stop it?-------------------------------------From - Sun May 30 12:05:56 2010X-Account-Key: account2X-UIDL: AF/JjkQAAQ3MTAJnGAF4F1k3DpAX-Mozilla-Status: 0011X-Mozilla-Status2: 00000000X-Mozilla-Keys: X-Apparently-To: rorscan@sbcglobal.net via 68.142.201.95; Sun, 30 May 2010 06:24:39 -0700Received-SPF: none (mta1030.sbc.mail.mud.yahoo.com: domain of rorscan@sbcglobal.net does not designate permitted sender hosts)X-YMailISG: ycRWkRQcZArdIraxiCUT8RfTIrALk_Xey5.8CLHJ_iNIm1HpV8orc8pDDmwfj_47khn8pEwCwniwdK8V7b2dZyPUoktXtxWjgMxwhytz5N48XA7RYN3EgecgvCdi2OdjgLCYN7FhBrd94._SgCsVngIy94QcIf_MD._K0CrT.2vfF3uzpMbtZvNM62QGkiT4zRs1HHG5RejttknOD51G7YGIFbpc.c4sJrkhTOWGP82PwHICq7UO83CIaj6qZ8H5tjrc0rQyWVHM3.GdBF8IJCKgxlWYHi097dItY2uPOTix3oPEqi1x_FzxedIlwu997KVNc3Gige44x3dn9PKA1rbgSdRJ.tbWSoeHHNuPJ9X3760E3ldMcrokc_RsBzsv.KYiSapIc3xY4ip0yhACqvh9qbKdJ6JnyJCdXgbrCcjMu0fS_hBDG_Cw3tao2l4TJJXe5S.VPOpGkt.YHdtrpsywuoeD17NJwpAAMC9PzANExmYVvyI1JTOctjoDUjUb4jEKwx6UB8gOUaMLN7cQ9w--X-Originating-IP: [69.46.35.247]Authentication-Results: mta1030.sbc.mail.mud.yahoo.com from=sbcglobal.net; domainkeys=neutral (no sig); from=sbcglobal.net; dkim=neutral (no sig)Received: from 207.115.36.99 (EHLO nlpi083.prodigy.net) (207.115.36.99) by mta1030.sbc.mail.mud.yahoo.com with SMTP; Sun, 30 May 2010 06:24:39 -0700X-Originating-IP: [69.46.35.247]Received: from roleplayerz.com (mx.roleplayerz.com [69.46.35.247]) by nlpi083.prodigy.net (8.13.8 inb ipv6 jeff0203/8.13.8) with SMTP id o4UDOceO022564 for <rorscan@sbcglobal.net>; Sun, 30 May 2010 08:24:38 -0500To: <rorscan@sbcglobal.net>From: "rorscan@sbcglobal.net"<rorscan@sbcglobal.net>Subject: Re: hiMessage-ID: <02DF218.ignrmywP984@roleplayerz.com> Date: Sun, 30 May 2010 09:24:38 -0400 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="YQADZXFEGVVAVQQNPJQTUQIQARVNJJQHZQNZPSF"Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit --YQADZXFEGVVAVQQNPJQTUQIQARVNJJQHZQNZPSFContent-type: text/htmlContent-transfer-encoding: quoted-printableContent-disposition: inline--YQADZXFEGVVAVQQNPJQTUQIQARVNJJQHZQNZPSF--

 

[EQ Admin]

Hello,

It could be spam or a phishing attempt. Any links in the email body?

The spam originated from 69.46.35.247.

If you want to make an abuse report you can contact :

OrgAbuseHandle: NRABU-ARIN
OrgAbuseName: NRABUSE
OrgAbusePhone: +1-425-741-7014
OrgAbuseEmail: abuse@netriver.net

 

[Phil]

Many thanks for your reply. No, there were no links in the body of either message. In fact, there was no text at all in the body of either message.

Per your suggestion, I made an abuse report to the address you gave me. The IP addresss is in Spokane but that tells me nothing. If it's a phishing attempt, since they request nothing and provide no link to send anything to, they won;t get much in return. Of course, they do learn that this is a valid email address. What baffles me is how they were able to fake that the messages came from my own email address! If it is even possible for someone else to have my same email address, might they also be capable of receiving genuine emails addressed to me?

 

[EQ Admin]

Forging the From: address on an email is easy, that's part of the reason why there is such a problem with spam.

You can do it yourself too by changing the From: field in the configuration settings in a mail program on your computer such as outlook express.

A possible reason for the blank email is that it's malformed HTML and not correctly displaying in the webmail / mail program that you use to read your email.

Another possibility as you guessed is that they are trying to figure out valid email addresses to sell and spam more later.

 

[Phil]

I didn't realized it was so easy to forge the FROM address. That sure takes any mystery out of this. I use Mozilla Thunderbird (kind of an updated Eudora) and it hasn't had problems with HTML but, as you say, maybe it was bad HTML code. I'll see what the reply to my abuse report says and probably conclude it's just somone gathering up valid addresses to sell - like I'm not already on enough spam lists.

Many thanks for your help. The forum is a nice service to know is there.