Spammed and Harvested

To be spammed is bad enough but to be spammed by your own email address is too much to bear.

I noticed in my junk mailbox, that I have being receiving emails from a company, tdameritrade.com, dealing in investment. However, when I point my cursor on the sender to view the email address, I am surprised to see that it is from my own email address!

So, other than sending the message to myself, who else has this company being sending the same messages to? My suspicion is confirmed when I started receiving complains from facilitators of forums that I am active at, that one or more of their members are harvesting email addresses to spam members of the group.

What did I do about it? I search "tdameritrade spam" and see that there were many postings by others who have dealings with the company who also complained that they have been spammed by this company. But I do not have any dealings with this company, so, how did they get my email address and how did they manage to hijack my account?

Through this search, I also discovered a posting by Project Honey Pot on the spam message supposedly emailed by TD Ameritrade, showing the IP address where the actual message came from. They are able to tracked it!

It commented that spammers tend to make up addresses or forge the addresses of real, legitimate users in their messages. Even if an email address, company name, or other information appears in your inbox, it does not mean that they belong to a spammer. Read all you want to know about spammers at their FAQ page and see what you can do to stop spammers from spoiling your reputation without you even knowing that it is happening.