Spam emails from my address, not sent by me

Question

I have been having emails sent to people in my address book which have an advertising links that I did not send. I have run scans and it finds no problems, is there any way I can stop this?

Answer 1

How do you access your email, is it through a desktop application like Microsoft Outlook or is it web based?

Is it only 1 person who sees this advertising added to your emails? If so it might be the recipient's email provider which is inserting the ads.

If it is web based then the email provider may be adding the advertising to the message.

Assuming though that this is a desktop application then there are a few possibilities: 1. Malware Not all malware will be found by using standard antivirus scanners. All scanners miss things which they don't have definitions for. You might also have a rootkit. To look for rootkits try RootkitRevealer http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897445.aspx

1. Email Signature Check that the email signature hasn't been modified by some malware you have removed already.

2. Your ISP Your internet service provider can change or add content to emails on the fly as they are sent out. Most ISPs would never dream of this as this would be a gross violation of privacy (IMHO). You can detect this by (if you have a laptop) sending email from another internet connection.