Somebody with an aol account please help me

[Pepper]

Hi, hoping someone will help out. Every couple of days, I get a nondelivery error message stating that the email I sent to 3dbarrysteinhorn@aol.com is undeliverable because the mailbox doesn't exist. This has been going on now for a couple of years.

I know one thing, I never sent any message to this nonexistent person.

If you have an aol account, and are willing to temporarily create 3dbarrysteinhorn please PM me. I would like to capture a few of these messages that are supposedly from me to see what they actually are. Maybe I can track down the source and get somebody in trouble with their ISP.

 

[charper1]

Assuming that AOL user name doesn't already exist, you can go get a free AOL CD from walmart, if you don't have AOL now, and create that account on your own PC with that info. Your PC isn't tied down to only one account, so you can do it yourself.

 

[Pepper]

Ack! Can I actually create the account and access its email without installing their stuff on my machine? And more importantly, without giving them any of my credit card info?

I think it's a good assumption the name doesn't exist since AOL's mail server tells me it doesn't exist just about every day.

 

[charper1]

Whoever does will have to load their crap software, but the CDs have a no credit card option so their ads say.

 

[TuxCoder]

I've seen viruses do something similar to this, where you get the "undeliverable" error mail messages showing a nonexistent originally intended recipient (and of course you had never tried sending anything to that address in the first place). In the cases I've seen, the virus does not exist on your computer, but someone else's where your address shows up in their address book. Why the viruses do that, I don't know but some googling in the context of viruses should prove insightful.

 

[charper1]

Good point TUX!

Pepper, when was the last time you ran a current, major AV & Spyware on your PC?

and mention that to the people your share your addy with as well.

 

[Pepper]

All my email is coming through a one of these: www.barracudanetworks.com and is then scanned by Symantec Antivirus plus I run spybot, ad-aware and MS-Antispy at various times.

Yeah, I am 99% sure it's either a virus somewhere, or somebody's sending out spam in my name but why only to one address? That's why I want to actually see what is getting sent to that address so I can determine what it is and who is sending it (or who is infected as the case may be).

It's really irritating, always the same destination address. I don't know who Barry Steinhorn is but I really am getting sick of him. All I found at google was www.barrysteinhorn.com which is a dead link.

I guess I could put a rule in my spamfilter to drop anything containing that name but that would be too easy. I'd rather kill it at the source

 

[TuxCoder]

Note, if and when you do get ahold of the message, don't blindly trust the "From:" field since forging that is a piece of cake. Rather, try to get the message in its original delivered form, with full headers. That way you can trace the message's path through mail servers. This info can still be forged, but it's not as simple and straightforward as the "From:" field.

Also, couldn't you create an AIM account with that name and then set up its email account (if it's not already created when the AIM account is created)? I'm not too familiar with all the different types of accounts AOL offers.

 

[Pepper]

Whoever does will have to load their crap software, but the CDs have a no credit card option so their ads say.

I guess I could look at this and sacrifice a test machine to the effort. Thanks for the suggestion.

 

[TuxCoder]

I see new stuff in your post above , so I'll add the following...
The email isn't necessarily being sent to just one address. Also, as I stated, and as you mention as well, the virus is not on your computer but on someone else's.

Oh, and regarding my previous post... it just occurred to me, the "From:" field on the "original" message should have... none other than your own email address.

 

[TuxCoder]

I guess I could look at this and sacrifice a test machine to the effort. Thanks for the suggestion.

Or try my AIM account suggestion above (unless an AIM account can't get set up with an email account of the same name, but if unsure, it's worth a shot).

 

[mikew]

I just tried to create the screen name and it won't let me. AOL requires the first character of a screen name to be a letter. Good luck on your quest!