[NBLUG/talk] My gmail account compromised.

[Bill Kendrick]

On Wed, Jan 02, 2008 at 08:35:26PM -0800, Mr. Jan Hearthstone wrote:
> Couple of times in the last few days somebody just
> used my gmail account to send garbage to my gmail
> acct. address book entries.
> 
> What can I do about it?

Just to be sure, is it _actually_ coming from your gmail account?
Or does it simply _purport_ to be coming from your gmail account,
and happens to be going to people you know?
(That is, forging the "From" address, which is about as far as most people
notice when they look at email.)

If someone out there that you know is using Windows and has one of countless
viruses or spyware, their computer may be emailing everyone in their
Outlook addressbook (or to email addresses found elsewhere, say in the contents
of their browser cache) and forging the messages to look like they come from
you.

These days, I get almost _no_ spam myself (thank you, Sonic.net's
filters), but I'm constantly receiving bounces, or automated "you sent
a virus" crap from mailservers, despite none of that junk coming from
my email address (I read my email using Mutt on Sonic.net's shell
server) or computers (I run Linux on my desktop, and don't run public
mailservers).  It's highly annoying.

Now... not to give you a false sense of security, but occam's razor
and all... :)  (Since you posted this to NBLUG, I'm guessing you use
Linux and are therefore inherently a bit more secure than the average,
and plentiful, Windows user.)

Have the recipients of the 'junk' that's 'coming from you' check the full
headers.  Is the email actually coming from gmail's servers?  If so, then
yeah, your gmail acct's likely to have been compromised.

Good luck!

-- 
-bill!
bill at newbreedsoftware.com
http://www.newbreedsoftware.com/