Reply: 3
From: Sim' Hampel
Gee Jay,
Several types of internet worm around at the moment contain their own SMTP mail server engine - so they can send their own emails without relying on your email program (like Outlook).
They also perform what is known as address spoofing, where they randomly select an email address on the machine they have infected, and send out emails which look like they have come from this OTHER email address.
This is most likely has happened to you (and it probably is what happened to Kristine a couple of weeks back)... somebody else (and I have no idea who) got infected with one of these worms, and that person had your email address in a file somewhere on their computer (this could even just be in the temporary internet files directory as a cached version of a web page (like the forum) that had your email address on it.
Then the worm creates an email and sends it out to other addresses at random that it finds and makes it look like it came from YOU, even though it didn't. This of course makes it really difficult to track down who actually has the virus infection.
I suspect the posts to the forum are coming from emails sent to the forum mail server which say that they are coming from a user who has set up the email interface to the forum. So long as the forum mail server thinks the message has a valid email address, it will post it - even though it may not have originated from you.
I think that WebCentral maybe needs to install an SMTP virus scanner on it's network to prevent these types of messages getting through.
This is all just guesswork... unfortunately without access to the WebCentral system, it is almost impossible to tell what is actually causing this stuff.
