Email Addresses Are Dangerous Now
You can't defend yourself against a ghost in the machine. If they have your email address- that is the actual letters and numbers that comprise your email IDENTITY, then they can do unfathomable damage due to the state of the world being paranoid first then thinking about it (thinking it through is rarely the first thing people do- they feel that deep seated plumet of their dissappointment (it can happen to me? I thought...) and
then that feeling is most often associated to the name on the header's "from" field- they first get angry but not at you so much as at the fact that they feel violated- then they need an outlet and your right there (not really you but some cloned copy of your identity- who'd of thought- email identity theft is real!
Sure they lash out then calm down when you give them a reality check- "stop yelling and listen- you didn't get hacked- this is benign so long as you didn't open the email or click anything"... but the damage is done because they've built a psychological filter that your the scum of the earth for doing this to them- even though you didn't- it's like if someone cloned you from your dna and that clone was caught with another
woman and your significant other didn't believe you- only this clone is digital in nature!
You can't get protection because this is not an actual virus- it's as benign at it's core as sending an email- it's what they do with it or how they perceive it that opens "Pandora's Box". The real virus is socially engineered! Read Mitnicks book "The Art Of Persuasion" (or something like that).
The bottom line is that your email address is now sacred- more than ever- but if you truly want to protect your identity from marketers, unscrupulous deviants, and anyone else who could potentially use a spoofing program or whom knows programming code and can really make it look legit even to the trained eye (someone who can read headers for example and knows to look in their sent folder for suspicious emails sent without your knowledge.
Although if this is the work of a virus they just take your email list and do the dirty work on their own secure system/network- so no "sent" mail appears, nor does it appear if they do it from your own computer as many of the "smart viruses" know how to and do just add a script to go into and remove the "sent" mail based on what it used for a subject line. More likely is the first option because it makes them untraceable (for the most part unless they were a white hat hacker with no real skills- just using a program/script- a real hacker made- they call these guys/gals Script Kiddies) - they essentially just ripped your email list and the virus likely used your own windows to delete itself when it's dirty work was complete!
Slightly Off Topic Fun Facts
Vengeance Ironically Can Come From The Hackers To The Script Kiddies!
I call them SC/Kiddies) ****** with too much automated power and no real idea of what their doing - so they usually can get caught, in fact some hackers attack THEM by making the program leave footprints back to the script kiddie- they do this to eliminate their potential future
competition or just because they hate people who don't learn the trade and make their own scripts- a lesson to them usually is this back stabbing code that the script kiddie likely can't even read to protect themselves!
The other irony is that if the person "using" the script does know their stuff- they will always look at the code to see if they can improve their own skillset- and when they see that piece of code that leaves footprints they smirk and say "nice, but no dice lol" and remove it- no harm no
foul- they know how the game is played.
The "virus within a virus" in this case is aimed at those lazy hackers who never take the time to learn code and thus the real hackers wanting a shortcut (not so much lazy as efficient) know to look and what to remove- to make the program a pure virus that won't backfire on them. "Use this program at your own risk" is not just a disclaimer- it's a hacker 'NOTE' and Script kiddies often have no clue that it's a real warning- don't use without knowing the code contents- would you drink something you didn't know anything about it's contents? I wouldn't- anymore
Back on topic...
The purpose of this off topic information is to further help you understand what's at stake and what you may one day need to explain to your boss, girlfriend, friends etc... if they lose it when your fake viral email (they spoof your email address and some are very cleaver about making it really look like you sent it including finding ways to get your IP address (which for most people is static, dynamic in reality but who really turns
their broadband modem off and back on again very often (the only way to change your IP is to recycle your modem other wise your on one LONG session of the same IP and until that connection is lost- it's static)?
The damages they could cause just based on how most people are reactive not active thinkers (even if they claim they think for themselves most people are actually reactive- they react to life not dominatingly living their life thus when something happens like say they open an email from YOU and click the link and find their hard drive infected- they blame you before rationally thinking it through (even I didn't realize an email address could be so problematic!) is mind boggling.
If you don't think that most people are reactive thinkers think on this: Why do those rediculous and annoying popups that keep popping up pissing people off- keep going? because someone out there is buying from that popup and keeping the popup momentum going- they don't care about your annoyance- they care about the 1 in 10k people who do buy- the rest can go to hell I'm sure- the same formula applies.
Your Email Could Get You Fired
The serious implications of someone harvesting your email are no longer simply "annoying" or causing you to reformat your drive to remove the virus that's sending email without your permission (or even awareness). No those days now are cherrished as the fix was annoying but worked.
Now, if they get your email, no virus is needed, other than one to harvest the list in your account. These hide in cool plugins for your browser, shareware, and even scripts on email/html sites... but this new (or old?) thing- even a mac user is compromised (what I mean by that is, if you didn't know, you can't attack a MAC computer with a standard virus- I heard years ago one virus got through but was quickly plugged (the hole).
So many people like MAC, especially in the old days of AOL proggie hacking and annoying other members of the community with a Visual basic program that would allow you to harness the power of the cheap aol browser/construct to harass and "punt" offline, any AOL user simply by hitting a button on a program- a 2 year old could do it). MAC users were immune to this and would laugh at the PC users (more politically correct PC means personal computer but often non mac computers were called PC's let's say instead windows users) and even found ways to
build those programs to work on a mac (for harassing but they couldn't be touched- they were the AOL mob squad lol).
Sorry, off topic again- so much to say so little space.
Now once they harvest your email they can send everyone in your list (or everyone in any list that includes you) any type of email and spoof it to look like it originated from your IP address, your computer/email program, and so on. If pressed a hacker could be hired to prove you didn't or if your savvy you could also prove it- but most people aren't that savvy or don't know a real hacker (or good programmer or someone proficient in email and code etc...).
What if they sent your boss some information that only you should know? What if they hacked into your email or somehow aquired some inside information about your work place protected by a non-disclosure agreement and made up some story about how you told them everything and they didn't think you should be trusted.
The implications here are that someone who knows you and wants to get back at you for taking their girl or whatever you did to upset them, and since you knew them you let them either have access to your pc (a thumbdrive can be purchased that will instantly plant a virus, keylogger and worse- just by putting it into the usb drive- which on most computers is hidden in the back so you'd never even know they did
it! With the keylogger alone they could have it email them everything you ever type- passwords are the least of your concerns- it's the things you type at work that are an issue here as they can easily gain credibility in saying your "sharing company secrets" simply by giving up that chit you typed one day that nobody else could know.
Likely- if your boss is an internet guru or knows some stuff about computers, he/she would know all of this is possible and wouldn't idiotically jump the gun wihtout at least talking to you, but again, many bosses are not so proficient- so you better know how to explain the potentials of this abuse to him/her (hence why I'm telling you this now!).
With your email address and a keylogger they can destroy you.
Back to the normal- they just got your email address from someone who was hacked's email contacts or themselves were spammed by someone they met on a forum and want to teach that person not to spam them (hackers really hate spam!) they would likely employ a campaign to spam all your contacts with an email coming from you and getting them to click a link. The rest is history.