Ask Me Help Desk - Email - Unplanned copy sent to other friend in address book

Using OE6 on Windows xp. When sending an email to one person in my address book, a copy of this email is automatically sent to another friend in my address book who I did not want to send the email to. (Good job I'm not talking about him LOL! ) Any idea what's going on here? Is OE corrupted, a virus or simply a setting out of place. Many thanks in advance. Rod

Quote:

Originally Posted by rodplod

Using OE6 on Windows xp. When sending an email to one person in my address book, a copy of this email is automatically sent to another friend in my address book who I did not want to send the email to. (Good job I'm not talking about him LOL !!) Any idea what's going on here? Is OE corrupted, a virus or simply a setting out of place. Many thanks in advance. Rod

This could be a virus that has hijacked your address book. There is an option in OE "warn me about other applications trying to send email as me" that might have merit; however, I have it turned on but have never tested it's effectiveness. You should also have an antivirus program installed that scans incoming/outgoing emails for infections too. If you don't have one, I would recommend the Avast free edition which also notifies you if multiple copies of the same email have been sent out in a very short period (the default is 5 seconds but it is adjustable). Another good reason to have this type of protection is that if a virus has hijacked your address book, it could also be using your PC to send out thousands of emails to other addresses as well.

Quote:

Originally Posted by xphelper

This could be a virus that has hijacked your address book. There is an option in OE "warn me about other applications trying to send email as me" that might have merit; however, I have it turned on but have never tested it's effectiveness. You should also have an antivirus program installed that scans incoming/outgoing emails for infections too. If you don't have one, I would recommend the Avast free edition which also notifies you if multiple copies of the same email have been sent out in a very short period of time (the default is 5 seconds but it is adjustable). Another good reason to have this type of protection is that if a virus has hijacked your address book, it could also be using your PC to send out thousands of emails to other addresses as well.

I have checked for viruses etc and already have the security measures in place that you suggest, but thank you for taking the time in replying anyway.