Dealing with Fake Emails

Have you ever received suspicious emails from a friend? It's fairly common for our email friends to receive malicious emails from us. A decade ago, when email attachment viruses were all the rage, it was very common for malware programs to survey your email address book and send malicious emails to everyone in it.

These days it's more common for malicious emails to be sent to some of your friends, but not everyone in your email address book. If it's just a few friends and not everyone in your email list, then more than likely your computer has not been compromised (at least with an email address-hunting malware program). These days malware programs and hackers often pull email addresses and contact lists from social media sites, but doing so means obtaining a very incomplete list of your contacts' email addresses. Although not always the case, the bogus emails they send to your friends often don not have your email address as the sender. It may have your name, but not your correct email address. If this is the case, then usually your computer is safe.

What to do: If one or more friends reports receiving bogus emails claiming to be from you, do your due diligence and run a complete antivirus scan on your computer, followed by looking for unwanted installed programs and toolbars. Often it's nothing to worry about, but it can't hurt to do a little health check when this happens.