Spoofed!

I got spoofed this morning. Perhaps you were one of the lucky recipients of an email trying to sell you cheap drugs like VIagra or other sexual enhancement pharmaceuticals.

I knew I was in trouble when I turned on my phone early this a.m. and I had 22 emails. I never have more than five or six. They each began with, "Did you send me this?" In horror I scanned the messages: some from close friends, others from people I didn't know that well. All asked, "Did you send me this??"

Was I hacked? I went to Gmail and followed the steps. Check my last user activity- last night, so no one got into my actual email account. Check the spam folder- yup lots of messages sent to 'me' from 'me.' Also a lot of unknown address bounce backs.

So the good news is I wasn't hacked, I was spoofed. The bad news was trying to explain to all those who wondered, "Did you send this?"

Spoofing is when some domain finds your email address through a third party and uses it to send out their message (spam) to everyone you ever sent or received an email from, that includes forwarded emails from others.

I posted a message on my face book wall. That took care of a lot of my friends and family, but then I got a message from an family member who was outraged. In her mind I was personally responsible for sending her this junk mail. She believed I had compromised her email account.

Even after I assured her it was not a virus, just spam that snuck through given the familiar email address, she was not convinced. She was going to change her email address and not give it out to anyone.
When I calmed down, I started to laugh- what's the point of having an email address if you aren't going to use it? Whatever, I had more security breaches to shore up.

An updated virus protection program, changed privacy settings, a new password and a virus scan run (times two computers) later I was ready for the day to be over. I treated myself to lunch and a nap. Thankfully I did not dream of spies or hacked computers.

The evening came and I after a leisurely dinner with my husband, I decided to check my email. The day had one more surprise:
a message from my husband's ex wife:

"Did you send me this?"

I'm going to have a drink....