Someone using my mail address for spam

Question

I have been getting a mail delivery notification that my email address is used to send spam to someone in Italy. Does this mean that they have access to my account? Is there any way to track down who is doing this? Can I stop it?
Thanks
David

Answer 1

Hello David.
Unfortunately, spammers do this sometimes but it does not mean the spammer has access to your account.
Spammers do not provide/include a valid sending or return email address and for many email accounts (depending on the email account provider), there is nothing preventing someone from including any email address in the email address field for the account preferences to appear as the sending email address for a message sent with the account.
For one of my email accounts in Mail (if I know your email address), I can simply go to Mail > Preferences > Accounts and under the Account Information tab for the account preferences, enter your email address in the email address field and your email address will appear as the sending email address when sending a message with my email account.
Some ISPs and email account providers restrict their customers from doing so but not all. As an example, you can't enter a different email address in the email address field for the account preferences for a .Mac account. This will prevent a message from being sent but you can enter a different reply to address for a sent message by including a Reply To: field with the message header when sending a message but a different reply to email address must be entered manually for each sent message.
You need to contact your ISP or email account provider for your email account. The return email non-delivery notification should include the original sender's computer IP address when viewing the long message headers for the non-delivery email notification message.
To view long message headers for a received message, with the message open, at the menu bar go to View > Message and select Long Headers. You can then forward the message with long headers shown for the original received message to your ISP's or email account provider's security department.