using someone else's ip

[lydia]

Can someone tell me if it is possible to steal someone else's ip and use it to send e-mails pretending to be that person? or you know - e-mails that look like were sent from my computer.
Please help, someone out there is making my life miserable!!!

[benthehutt]

What happened exactly?  Do you mean, emails that were sent from your email account?  That's certainly possible--prolly a virus or something.  Who do you have an account with?  (g-mail, yahoo, etc.)

[lydia]

No, emails where sent from my computer - with a made-up hotmail address - when my friend check the ip on the e-mails - it's my ip- but no one other than me - has access to my computer - and i didn't send them - how is that possible?

[Metgod]

Two questions:

1. Do you have a static (never changes) or dynamic (changes each time you connect) IP ?

2. Have you ever heard of anonymous mailers (or even directly connecting to a mail server that allows remote relaying ?). I.e., if they know of a server that allows that, it's pretty easy to spoof the entire mail.

[lydia]

I have an static ip. And i have no knowledge of remote servers etc. Please, explain

[Metgod]

It's possible to connect to a mail server and send a mail to someone as anyone you wish. It turns out that most servers these days (Or I hope) deny this, but some still exist (and I guess spammers of all people know them best). If I remember right, a lot of servers don't even require you to use a password to send mail, only receive.

Anyway, if someone is sending mail as you, I'd recommend you scan your system completely (for worms, viruses, etc). Also, you might want to install a port logger to see what is going through your puter (or puters). Microsoft has one I've recently learned at microsoft.com (was going to include the direct link but it failed -- just search their download section for "port logging").

Why ? Because I somehow doubt it someone is manually doing this to annoy you. But definitely it's possible to fake emails... and other things too (IP, host name, MAC address...etc)

Hope that helps.

[benthehutt]

Mmm...port log...(*walks off humming "port-logs roasting o'er an open fire")

[Uneek]

er... how is it possible that you checked the "IP" of the email and it came from your computer??? That wouldn't happen unless your computer is the actual SMTP server itself. If you are connecting to a third party email server, i.e. your ISP's or Hotmail, etc., the IP associated with the email header information would be of that server and not your home PC. So seems like a bit of misinformation here or sumfin's feeeshy...

[syklops]

hotmail has a habit of appending your ip to the mail header. Check it out! It can be useful But its also a bit of a risk.

[Metgod]

Yes.. but that's not what Uneek was asking/saying...

[wilnix]

How about you post the header information so we can help you?

I speak SMTP, POP3, and IMAP so I would be glad to help.

Wilnix

[Uneek]

I don't know anything about email... hahaha

[Metgod]

Yeah, kind of ironic ...

A qmail admin is so ignorant that he doesn't even know what a 'X-Originating-IP' field is.

Only one who doesn't practice common sense would think that ...