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config5517

New Contributor

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2 Messages

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My Thunderbird email account is hacked?

Every day I receive hundreds of emails, and they are addressed as follows :

From: Mail Administrator <Postmaster@Cox.net>

To: my email address

Here is an example of the body of the email:

    Recipient: <mang0bapex@hotmail.com>
    Reason:    Requested action not taken: mailbox unavailable
    
    Please reply to <Postmaster@cox.net> 
    if you feel this message to be in error.

Is this something that you, COX , can help me resolve.  Or do I need to look in the Mozilla Thunderbird forums for an answer?? Thanks.

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Health_Edge

+5 more

Valued Contributor III

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4.2K Messages

Do you know Mang0bapex? I will assume you don't. If so, then someone looks to have your username and password and is probably mass spamming on your account, and your getting the error messages as it (worm,bot, person) tries to send to emails that don't exists. I suggest changing your password, and to something you have never used before. 

DO you know how and if so, could you post the entire email header? Just remove any personal email of yours from it. If you don't know how to do this, forget about it and just change the password. :-)

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ChrisL

Former Moderator

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7.1K Messages

It sounds like you may be the victim of a type of indirect spam attack frequently called a "joe job" or "back scatter":

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_job

Unfortunately there really isn't much you can actively do on the recipient side of the issue short of either finding out who is sending the original messages and making them stop or changing your email address.  The general nature of the situation is somebody sends out undeliverable email claiming your email address is there's which anybody can do and the intended recipient email system returns the email to the return address (yours) informing you that it couldn't be delivered.

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config5517

New Contributor

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Thanks all.  I went to COX web site and changed my COX password there.  When opened Thunderbird I was prompted twice for the new password - once to receive email, and once to send my first message.  Its been about an hour now and have not received any more emails, so perhaps its fixed. 

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