My mail server reports my inbox is full. Is this a virus?

Question

People who send me an email get a message back saying my inbox is full. I do actually receive the email.

Is this a virus? How do I stop this happening?

Answer 1

Are there any attachments to the emails the others receive? If yes, what kind of attachments? If it is zip or even exe then most likely yes, it is a virus. Do a full scan of your box, if that doesn't fix it or the mails are send directly from the mail server and not your box, inform your e-mail provider of a possible contamination.

If there are no attachments, then clear out your inbox, it's not a virus. It's you not cleaning out your inbox.

Answer 2

People who send me an email get a message back saying my inbox is full.

Each user on a server is assigned a certain amount of disk space. Yours is full. Delete unwanted items and then empty the trash, or call your provider and ask them to increase your quota.

I do actually receive the email.

You're probably getting some, but not all, of your incoming mail.

Say someone sends you a 42k email message and your account has just enough room to write the message to disk: the server will acknowledge receipt of the message and the sender will not receive a bounce. Three minutes later, when another message arrives but there's no room left to write it, the server returns an error saying your inbox is full. Later, you check your mail and create a little more space. Rinse and repeat.