[KP*]

Like many people, I've been getting a lot of funny German spam in the last week or so, and also a lot of Delivery Status Notification things that make it look like I've been sending out spam. So I'm guessing someone has been spamming using my spoofed address, but here's the real problem: I just tried to send an e-mail to my assistant who is on AOL ( , but that's besides the point) and AOL is not accepting messages from me because they say my IP address has generated too many incoming messages. So now I can't communicate with my assistant and I've had it.

Is it possible that I have a Mac virus? I haven't heard of anything like this except Windows viruses. And if it's not on my machine then how do I stop it? Spam I can live with, but getting my IP blocked from AOL is really messing me up.

Any experts please help!

Update: It seems that sending mail from my .Mac address works, but not from the address that's receiving (and allegedly sending) the spam.

[ghporter]

There's nothing funny about the German spam that many of us have been getting. It's neo-Nazi hate stuff. Here's an article on the virus that causes the spam.

Now, the good news: YOU don't have a virus. Somebody that had your address somewhere in his computer probably does, and the virus used your address as the return address on that spam.

Most of us don't really understand that EVERYTHING in an email header is spoofable-some parts are just easier than others. The return address is very spoofable, so you're getting delivery failure notices because someone who had your address got infected and their computer sent out spam that falsely said you had sent it.

Do not worry about your computer's safety in this case. The Sober virus is the culprit here, and it only infects Windows platforms. The bad news is that there are a LOT of those platforms, so odds are that someone you know is having BIG problems with his computer because of this. This is Symantec's page on this particular virus (or at least one of its close cousins).

[amazing]

Glenn's explanation says it all. Some "friend" with a PC is infected with sober.

My momma done told me to watch the company I keep: too bad you just can't say "no" to having friends with infected PCs...

Anyway, you should also get yourself a free yahoo.com email address, or a google gmail.com address. That way, if there're the inevitable problems with the reliability of .mac email you'll have something else to fall back on.

[ghporter]

And ask all your friends about their PCs-if they're having problems, they may be infected and not know it (Sober doesn't always make itself known right away, even though it's sending out this hate crap). This is one that's fairly easy to eradicate from an infected computer by following the instructions on Symantec's page (link in my earlier post). Asking around and providing a good link is known as "being a good neighbor."

[analogika]

One point: "inevitable problems with the reliability of .mac email"?

The last outage I had was half a day some time last year, and *that* was announced ahead of time.

-s*