I've had a spam email from my own email address which i didn't send. Does this mean my email has been hacked?

What can i do about it? I don't want to change my email address as i'm self employed and rely on it for work. But equally i don't want the work contacts in my address book to get email from me about Viagra. Help!

I've had a spam email from my own email address which i didn't send. Does this mean my email has been hacked?
got that at least twice a day. Don't worry. How they do that? I think it is a simple programme. On my account at yahoo I can change my Senders part. As a self employed myself I use 3 different headers of my e-mails. they all end with yahoo.com. Really, I am so annoyed with all that rubbish in my mail box and would like to propose some regulations on all that dear Friend, Beloved , Lottery winners and business propositions. At present all that I can do; SPAM IT!
Reply:Hi there, not to worry, you've not been hacked.





What they do is they send "harvesters" out onto the internet, also called spiders or bots. They go round the net on popular websites where people tend to post their email addresses, such as forums and places like Yahoo answers. Whenever they find an @ sign, they copy the email address and save it (automatically).





So for instance if they found bob@bob.com - then they use that email address to send a viagra offer or some other useless piece of spam to. To foil any attempts at blockage from a spam filter, they use it as the SENDER as well. So it goes to bob@bob.com but is sent from bob@bob.com - most new spam filters are clever and will flag this, but it seems yours isn't.





So in other words, don't be alarmed, happens all the time. To prevent this from happening, get an anti-spam piece of software like norton antispam or windowswasher. I think there are a number of free antispams as well, do a quick google for "antispam +freeware" and I'm sure you'll get good results. Good luck!