Re: Email problem

[Daniel Kerr]

Hi Julie

It’s highly unlikely it came from your machine at all. More then likely it came 
from someone else’s infected computer, but spoofs your email address. This is 
how virus “work around it”.
When a computer gets infected, what some viruses will do is just go through the 
person’s address book and picks a “to” address, and a “from” address. Then 
repeats. So it “spoofs” who it actually comes from.
This way it’s harder to track down sometimes who the infected computer was. As 
your contractor thinks it came from you, and your computer doesn’t show it 
going out at all. Yet some “mutual” contact you both know more then likely is 
where the data was “collected” from.
This has some more info about it here - 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_spoofing

Basically, as their “definition” says,…
/quote
Alice is sent an infected email which she opens, running the worm code.
The worm code searches Alice's email address book and finds the addresses of 
Bob and Charlie.
From Alice's computer, the worm sends an infected email to Bob, but forged to 
appear to have been sent by Charlie.
In this case, even if Bob's system detects the incoming mail as containing 
malware, he sees the source as being Charlie, even though it really came from 
Alice's computer; meanwhile Alice may remain unaware that her computer has been 
infected.
/end quote

So more then likely all is fine on your computer, and it’s someone else that 
“pretended” to send out as you.
(email addresses are very easy to “spoof”. I could quite easily post an email 
to wamug which “looks” like it’s come from you, but I’ve actually sent it from 
my computer. Obviously I won’t and most people wouldn’t as it’s against our 
nature to be malicious, but I’m just using that as an example to show what I 
mean).
If however, you want to just check just incase you can run some of the free 
Virus checking software, and even Malware check just incase. Just be aware 
these can take many hours to run sometimes as it looks over all the files etc. 
And from my experience with client computers, it’s very very rare to find 
anything. (I’ve yet to have a client have a “real” virus on their computer in 
the 17 years of doing MacWizardry).
Some of the free Virus checks that people recommend are - 
Sophos -  https://home.sophos.com/free-mac-antivirus
ClamXAV - https://www.clamxav.com
Avast! - https://www.avast.com/en-au/free-mac-security

MalwareBytes can be downloaded here - 
https://www.malwarebytes.com/mac/

Just running the trial of one of them is fine, as if you do run it to scan, 
then you can just remove it once finished. 
But as mentioned, it’s more then likely it will have originated from you in the 
first place, so your computer should be fine.
We’re still pretty lucky in the Mac world for viruses (virii?) as we still 
really don’t get them. (and others may say they’re not running anything all the 
time either as has been the “normal” for many years. It’s not worth the 
“overhead” of computer resources or money.*
*In some places, it’s worth having, just for peace of mind, or a “requirement” 
to have it in certain businesses/organisations, but in generally the Mac is 
still pretty safe. 

Others may disagree with this, but from experience I’ve yet to see anything to 
prove otherwise from my workings around the place.

Hope all that info helps.

Kind regards
Daniel

---
Daniel Kerr
MacWizardry

Phone: 0414 795 960
Email: 
Web:   


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> On 20 Jun 2018, at 10:08 pm, Julie Bedford  wrote:
> 
> 
> Hi All,
> 
> Hoping someone can enlighten me ….
> I had a call from one of our contractors today saying that he had received an 
> email from me yesterday, which was not for him.  When I checked it out, I 
> didn’t send him an email.  He said something similar happened last year.   
> Could this be a virus ?  I use El Capitan  and have held back upgrading to 
> the latest OS.  Is there any software  out there to rid me of this virus, if 
> that is what it is.  Incidentally I have never sent this contractor an email, 
> so his address would not be in my system. 
> 
> Thanks
> Jewels
> 
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Email problem

[Julie Bedford]

Hi All,

Hoping someone can enlighten me ….
I had a call from one of our contractors today saying that he had received an 
email from me yesterday, which was not for him.  When I checked it out, I 
didn’t send him an email.  He said something similar happened last year.   
Could this be a virus ?  I use El Capitan  and have held back upgrading to the 
latest OS.  Is there any software  out there to rid me of this virus, if that 
is what it is.  Incidentally I have never sent this contractor an email, so his 
address would not be in my system. 

Thanks
Jewels

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