Someone is using my email alias


  #1  
Old 06-24-12, 10:13 AM
badeyeben's Avatar
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Someone is using my email alias

I get email from my service provider. I have an email that I been using for years but the address changes when they change owners. It is now Frontier who bought Verizon now. Any ways I noticed a few emails to a person I did not recognize. Then I noticed it was to my address but a little different. I emailed and called my provider about it and they say that address is an alias of my address so they are 1 and the same address. i explained what was happening and they said to block those emails or just delete them. Sounded fair enough but they are still being sent I just do not see them if they are blocked.
Next thing I know there is a new person using the address and they are on Facebook. I looked in search on Facebook but there were 54 people with that name there. Of course there is no way to contact Facebook about this problem that I could find.
I am afraid I am going to get a virus or something from these people as they seem to click everything they see as I am getting a huge amount of mail from what looks like spam. I KNOW if I do not open it just delete it the chances are pretty slim of getting any virus. But I am now getting 8 to 10 email a day for at least 3 different people at that address. It is maddening.
Any ideas as how to stop this abuse short of changing my email address? Like I said I have had this address since I started on the internet back in the early 70's hate to change it now! How aggravating this is!!
 
  #2  
Old 06-24-12, 11:06 AM
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I have that too, but those hokey emails are sent to my spam folder. Are they being sent to your spam folder or your inbox?
As long as you don't open any attachments or click on any links in them, you won't get any virus. Just getting the email won't give you a virus.
 
  #3  
Old 06-24-12, 10:40 PM
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I Agree with Shadeladie just getting an e-mail will not give you a virus you really have to open the e-mail and most times click on an attachment. However that being said you can still get viruses and trojan horses by clicking on certain links in search engines. To be fair to search providers they do their best to try to keep bad links out and are getting a bit better but things still find their way onto search engines. So to protect yourself always make sure your virus definitions are up to date and if you are unsure of something make sure you do a full scan of your computer.
If you are not vigilant people have been known to hack into your e-mail account so keeping up with your security on your computer is very important. Not only on the computer but around it too as cleaning services don't always have the most trustworthy people working for them even the best that do screening sometimes accidentally let in bad people. I say this because it happened to me a trojan or virus was on my computer and someone hacked into my e-mail actually sending things to me with my own e-mail address. Everything was finally resolved but it took several changes of my password as well as re-installing my operating system after a complete wipe to make sure everything was gone. As for a cleaning service if memory serves me right I remember a friend of mine who recently moved out of the area telling me once that she caught a cleaning service near her computer and later seeing e-mails that didn't look right. She was lucky it could have been worse.
 
  #4  
Old 06-25-12, 11:40 AM
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Ah, yes. The wonderful "upgrade" to a Yahoo-powered E-mail that Frontier stuck us with. This happened to me a few weeks ago and I'm madder than heck about it.

For more than a dozen years I have used a Yahoo E-mail address as my primary E-mail. I learned the hard way what happens when you use the ISP's E-mail service and then change ISP. While I have had FiOS service for several years I have only used the Verizon (now Frontier) E-mail sporadically and mostly when I wanted the recipient to know it was from me as my addy with the ISP-based service is my real first name and last name initial vs. my Yahoo being totally fictitious. I had the Verizon/Frontier set to forward all mail to my anonymous Yahoo and it worked quite well until about a week or two ago.

Yesterday it occurred to me that I hadn't received certain advertising that should have been sent to my Frontier account so I logged in and had about two dozen new and unread notes. I went to the section that controlled forwarding and it said that I had to "register" my Yahoo address to have the mail forwarded. Poking around in this "back stage" area I found the page that listed all my aliases and all I could do is shake my head as there were, as I recall, about six aliases. Several of them had "resyn" in the addy. I did the "register" bit but then couldn't access my old standby Yahoo but instead was always shifted to the Frontier. I tried to "un-register" and then I got both services again but I cannot have both services running at the same time. I used to be able to have the Yahoo open in one tab and the Frontier open in another tab with no problem. I could even close those tabs and just click on the log-in page and get either service as long as I didn't close my browser.

But starting at the same time as the Frontier/Yahoo "upgrade" I can ONLY have one service open. If I try going to the other service I have to log-in again and that action closes me out of the other service. This is no upgrade as far as I am concerned.

Today I DID receive forwarded messages from the Frontier to my anonymous Yahoo so that part is now working but when I tried to write down the steps for Ben to access his aliases I can no longer find it. You can start at the top of the mail page, above the "Powered by Yahoo" and click on Options. From there click on Mail Options and check the various line items on the left hand menu. The aliases used to be in the last line item, POP & Forwarding but no more, at least for me.

 
  #5  
Old 06-26-12, 09:53 AM
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I understand that the probability of getting a bug is low but it is still aggravating to get all these junk mails. And the fact someone else is getting benefit from using a false email address.
Furd, I found my alias addresses under HELP...then Frontier Account Editor. Unfortunately none of the 4 I found can be deleted or changed. But I could add more!!
No they do not go into the spam (called Junk on mine) folder. I was told by the tech to move them to the junk folder and after a while the thing would learn to put them there. Then I still have to go there to delete them. But as you all know spam rarely is from the same sender every time so it is a futile effort I think.
So I guess I live with this until the persons using my address get tired of using it or they actually want to receive email.
Thanks for the support everyone.
 
 

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