[mlwjackson]

Over the last several months the number of spam emails I receive has exploded. Today I got a piece of spam with my own email address as the originator of the spam. It came in at a time that could not have origianted on my PC in anything resembling real time. It arrived at 9:46 AM eastern standard time (US) on 2/4/08. The only computer that has an email software program loaded (the only one I use for email) has not been turned on since about 9 PM on 2/3/08. That is at least a 12 hour lagtime. I am concerned about the possibility that my machine has some how become a bot. I keep an enterprise level mcafee antivirus program updated, run spywareblaster and spybot search and destroy. I use Zonealarm as my software firewall. The only known weakness is a weak password for my router.

Is it likely that my machine has been compromised or has someone just gotten my address from another spammer and is using it to spew spam?

What do I need to do at this point to determine the situation?