Most likely, a virus has infected the Windows machine of someone you have sent email to or received email from, and the virus is "spoofing" your email address.
An example of how this works is pasted below (from symantec.com's description of sobig. I have had this happen to me and the usual pattern is that I will get up to 20 or these per day for a couple of days and then it gradually dies down. ______symantec description of sobig__________ The email message has the following characteristics: From: Spoofed address (which means that the sender in the "From" field is most likely not the real sender). The worm may also use the address, [EMAIL PROTECTED], as the sender. NOTES: * The spoofed addresses and the Send To addresses are both taken from the files found on the computer. Also, the worm may use the settings of the infected computer's settings to check for an SMTP server to contact. * The choice of the internet.com domain appears to be arbitrary and does not have any connection to the actual domain or its parent company. > A few days ago, I received an email from AOL that said a email address I > sent something to was unknown. I didn't think anything of it, as alot of > the addresses I reply to (on this and other lists) are unknown to me. > > This morning I received two more messages with different emails, but also > @AOL. So I went through my sent mail, and didn't see any of the three in > there. Then I went through and searched for them (one at a time) through > all my saved messages. Nothing there either, except for the three > messages AOL sent me with these bogus email addresses ([EMAIL PROTECTED], > [EMAIL PROTECTED], can't recall the third) > > Anyone have any thoughts on this, or is anyone having the same thing > happening to them right now? > -- Compact Macs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/>. Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> Compact Macs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/lists/compact.shtml> --> AOL users, remove "mailto:"; Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive:<http://www.mail-archive.com/compact.macs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> --------------------------------------------------------------- >The Think Different Store http://www.ThinkDifferentStore.com ---------------------------------------------------------------
