Another little niggle

[Aggers]

Bly me, Frank.

I've only just got round to reading your last post. I'll have a go at it.

Another funny thing has happened today, I've received about 20 Emails, FROM MYSELF showing a link to some website, which I'm not going to use.
The email also shows several other places where "my" Email has been sent, which have obviously been taken from my computer's Email address book.
What do you make of that?

I have come to the conclusion that I shall have to spend some money on Internet security. Norton?

What do you recommend ?

[Workingman]

If I was buying security then it would be Norton, and I know that Suff would strongly suggest it.

The email thing is a bit strange. Are they all from one account to the other - BT to Yahoo, say?

I have a rule: I never use CC unless I absolutely want all recipients to know who is "in", for all other multi-emails I use BCC.

[Aggers]

Frank, re the Emails - They did not appear in my "Emails sent" file, so I think I was just included in the list of those of my
contacts who were to receive these spurious and suspicious messages, all of which were titled with my name in capital letters.

No doubt Norton would have prevented access to my Emails address book, so I now propose to install Norton, and I suppose
that once that is done I should then get myself a new Email address. What do you think?

I now have sorted out the problem of viewing both my Email files, thanks to your valuable help.

[Workingman]

A new address would be helpful especially if you only use it for a closed circle of people or for official business. The others can then be used as throw-aways, these are sometimes needed on sites to access all of it.

However, when you want to inform people of your new address DO NOT use CC, use BCC as each recipient will only see themselves as receiving it and not the whole world.

[Aggers]

However, when you want to inform people of your new address DO NOT use CC, use BCC as each recipient will only see themselves as receiving it and not the whole world.

I'm sorry, Frank, but that's double-dutch to me. I didn't know they even existed.

By-the-way, I now have Norton installed - they very kindly installed it for me by remote control. Let's hope I don't have any more problems.

Thanks again for your help.

[Workingman]

John, when you want to tell your friends that you have a new email address you can do:

1. Send each of them a personal email.

2. Set up one email.

"Dear friends, please note that this in my new email address Aggers@somefreeemail.com please use it from now one. Thank you, John."

a) You then send this to one person and carbon copy (CC) all the rest in by adding them to the CC field. The problem is that everyone gets to see everyone else who got one and this could have issues if someone's address book gets hacked, or a harvester gets in.

b) You then send this to one person and BLIND carbon copy (BCC) all the rest in by adding them to the BCC field. The email still gets sent to everyone, but they only see themselves as recipients.

The CC and BCC fields are available in the compose screen, sometimes they are hidden but can be shown in Tools or similar.

[Aggers]

Thanks for that explanation, Frank.

I haven't had any more junk or suspicious Emails, so I'll not bother about changing my Email address yet.

Norton has already dealt with a threat it has discovered.

[Workingman]

John, I have just been to my gmx account where I found 29 messages from your johnw*********3 @BT internet. com account in my spam box. That is the account which has been hacked so you should close it down/not use it.

In this email I selected these are the addresses the spam was sent to:
reply @info.petsathome.com, geoff w***ng @sky.com, account. enquiries @homeshoppingdirect.com, (Frank - me)53 @gmx.co.uk, picnic. basket @hotmail.co.uk, johnw***********3 @btinternet.com (you).

I have broken them up so that any email harvester will not see them. You might recognise them.

[Aggers]

Frank. Thanks for that info.

I'll see about closing down that Email account with BT tomorrow and get them to provide me with a new one.

[Aggers]

Frank...

I've just spent over an hour on the phone to India and managed (I hope) to get my BT Email address changed.

Now I have to decide which contacts and websites I need to notify. Hopefully I shall now get less junk mail.

Time for a mug of coffee.