Email sent using my name to someone but not my email addresss...

[AndyD]

So at first I thought I was hacked but as I looked through the email it looks like the email came from another email address. Could it be the other person has been hacked? Or is it just me?

I find it hard to believe that I've been hacked as I have two factor authentication and some crazy password but I guess anything is possible. I'm just not sure if I need to change things on my end or not.

[sc302 Veteran]

someone spoofed your name...I could have my mail look like it is coming from anyone I choose. While the email address it self won't change, the from can change to whomever I choose. No biggie, their mail cache or contacts has been spoofed. It is when it starts coming from your mail address that I would worry about.

[+BudMan MVC]

You can put any name or email address you want on email.. Its quite common to use other users email address in spam/garbage sent email.

If you looked at the headers, and it did not come from your email server or machine, then its just someone/something using your email address/name.

[AndyD]

Yeah, I know. I just thought it was odd that my name was used.

[xWhiplash]

I thought you could even make your email appear to be from x@y.com?

[+BudMan MVC]

You can send email from whoever you want, can send mail from santa@northpole.com if you want or god@heaven.com, etc.. or just lsadjjsdf@lsjflwsdfjs.tld

[AndyD]

I know I know. It's more of how would someone get my name and email someone I know using my name. It's no big deal. I would have expected to see my email address to go along with it that's all

[exotoxic]

Names are not exclusive, its probably just coincidence.

[TAZMINATOR]

That problem you mentioned has been going for years.. even the anonymous email..

As BudMan said, the email can be sent from anybody .. no matter who.. you put whatever you want in From field. Once you do that, look at the header.

If you are not happy with it, you can simply make a rule for it so it will be sent to the trash instead of inbox.

[Original Poster]

ye its quite easy thing to do, I built an anonymous emailer before as well as a spammer on my site you could choose to send an email using any name and email address (I saved them, when i read them some people put some funny stuff) or they could send up to 5000 emails to one person at a time (which we took down for legal reason) ... really easy to do this was made when i first started to learn code about 6 years ago

[+BudMan MVC]

"someone get my name and email someone I know using my name."

As mentioned already - you sure its not PURE coincidence.. I assume your name is not Smith from your D on the end of Andy.. But its not like Andy is rare, so you sure it just not someone with the same name as you? ;)

So from a quick google "Davis" <starts with="" d=""> is the 6th most common surname in the US.. With approx 1,193,760 - So if your name is Andy Davis, Its quite possible that there are thousands of people with that same name ;)Just Saying..

[AndyD]

Hah well it can be but my surname I don't think is that common except maybe amongst Cubans. I can't rule it out obviously but it just seems suspect considering who it went to and my name was used. I can say this for sure...my last name is not listed here...

http://en.wikipedia....n_North_America

or here....

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

lol

[TAZMINATOR]

You can rule the email out... not your name... look at the source and/or message to see what it is about... then you can add filter based on the keyword you find in it...

[primexx]

are you able to sign your legit emails and publish a DMARC rule?

[HawkMan]

Hah well it can be but my surname I don't think is that common except maybe amongst Cubans. I can't rule it out obviously but it just seems suspect considering who it went to and my name was used. I can say this for sure...my last name is not listed here...

http://en.wikipedia....n_North_America

or here....

http://en.wikipedia....n_South_America

lol

You could have the guy who got the mail check his computer for viruses and other bad stuff as well, it may very well be it grabbed your name form his contact list, or any contacts you both share. and then there's the whole social engineering and networking. today you don't need to know a lot. Make an automated spambot, have it google the target first, use some fancy code in the search results to find likely connections, use one of those names and end spam. Done well it should all be dine in a few microseconds and the bot can go on and on spamming people with mails that appear to be from their friends, but of course since it's just grabbing names from search queries or social networks, it doesn't get the mail address right.

[primexx]

so i just re-read the OP, seems like much ado about nothing. anyone can set any name to any email address trivially. it doesn't even involve an anonymous mailer, you can set it in the GUI of any email service ever. DMARC policies won't help because they're not even claiming to be sending from your domain. just ignore it.

[stumper66]

Last year I started getting emails from names of people who are my facebook friends. The email is always the same "Hi, I found this interesting <link to malicious site>".

It's always from a random name of my friends list.

So don't be surprised if someone has your name, it's everywhere.