[ProEd]

For some months now I have been receiving between 5 & 15 emails per day on my personal email accounts. My impression is that these are automatically generated from an unknown and untraceable source.

I have 2 email addresses on this account, began receiving these emails early this year at one address, then at the second a couple months later. The emails include gibberish in the Subject line and, I am sure, the senders are fictitious. Most subjects are gibberish (e.g., "tradesman gauguin classroom posterior") while most of the names appear real. In the beginning I would mark these as Spam, though that was useless since the senders name & address changed with every email. Since, I have simply deleted anything that is not familiar. I never open them.

I am unable, at least for the near term, to change my email addresses. Is there another option?

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Please go here:

Malware Removal Guide

You will need a PC which can connect to the internet

Run all the programmes as advised then post a current Hijack This Log in a new topic in the Malware Forum

For the purpose of accurate malware analysis, Hijack This Logs are only dealt with in the Malware Forum. Posting them anywhere else will result in a delayed response

If you are unable to run any of the programmes, ask for advice in the Malware Forum

[Retired Tech]

Please go here:

Malware Removal Guide

You will need a PC which can connect to the internet

Run all the programmes as advised then post a current Hijack This Log in a new topic in the Malware Forum

For the purpose of accurate malware analysis, Hijack This Logs are only dealt with in the Malware Forum. Posting them anywhere else will result in a delayed response

If you are unable to run any of the programmes, ask for advice in the Malware Forum

[ProEd]

Hello again Keith. Good to hear from you & thank you for your response. Your recommendation looks to be a rather lengthy set of procedures so it may take a couple days for me to complete. I will follow through and post results.

By the by.... I regularly run AdAware (freeware version) and Norton AV 2006 software scans on my PC. Nothing of note from either scan last weekend. As for SpyBot, I used to run this regularly but in recent months have attempted numerous times to download updates but get "checksum" errors on all available downloads. I intend to uninstall SpyBot and reinstall. Any thoughts?

As for Trend Micro's Housecall, I have never been able to run it, though I have attempted several times in the last 6 or so months. It's been awhile so I do not recall the issues. Will try again.

As for AVG and AVAST, they would be the last AV software that I would run on my PC. I have assisted friends attempting these, and other, AV scans in the last year. I define the word "slow" as AVG or AVAST. Just today my friend ran AVAST.... over 3 hours for the scan w/ nothing found (>200k files scanned). Another friend ran AVG and it took well over 2 hours w/ no infection results (we uninstalled AVG, installed Norton and found a virus). A complete scan w/ Norton, the memory hog, on my PC takes about 20 minutes (something over 200k files).

As for Windows Update.... I update my Windows XP SP2 at least weekly.

[Retired Tech]

Online scans which will not run can be an indication of malware, when you submit the log to the malware team they will notice anything which should not be there

If they do not see anything untoward, post back here

[ProEd]

A couple of weeks after the prior post on this topic I ran into a major malware problem (you can ref. this topic on my topics list under Malware). I completed nearly all recommended steps and posted an HJT log. My G2G tech. reviewed it and told me that my PC was clean. During this period of running the recommendations I connected to the internet on the infected PC only to access G2G and download recommended software. I accessed my webmail thru my work laptop. The gibberish emails continued thru that period and continue today, though that PC was declared clean.

My thought at this point is that a highjacker obtained my email addresses from some source other than my PC and that they reside on some form of automatic mailing list. In fact, I wonder if that source may have been my ISP (Earthlink) since a very few others (only a handful of close personal friends) have both of my email addresses.

With the PC now clean of malware, is there any other option for blocking these gibberish emails other than changing my email addresses?

I fear I already know the answer but would appreciate any thoughts/wisdom/experiences on this.

By the by.... an unrelated question. I see members name listings, like me, include the propeller head icon. While the symbolism of this icon appears obvious I am curious to know how G2G determines the quantity of these symbols that will be allotted to each individual member. The number of icons ranges from 1 to 4 but there seems to be no correlation to tenure as a member. No matter, just curious.