Question: Why am I getting emails with Zip Files?

Somebody seems to have hijacked a couple of my account names, I'm getting emails from info@[mydomain].com, webmaster@[mydomain].com, etc etc, with zip files attached. Any idea on how to remedy it?

Answer

Sadly, there's not a lot you can do about this. What's happening (most likely) is that some virus creator has created a virus (that's what is in the zip file attached to the email). Since the creator of the virus isn't going to send out the email on his own address (after all, if he did, we'd be able to track it back to him much more easily) his virus is designed to grab email addresses out of people's contact lists, or out of html pages cached on their hard drive, and then forge those addresses into the emails it sends out.

Can you stop it from happening? Probably not. It's one of the biggest frustrations of doing business on the internet - that people's impressions of your business may be formed by the fact that they get a virus which appears to come from your business email address.

Now, there is one hope...it's possible that you are getting these spams because someone who you know, and who has your email address in their contact list, has the virus on their computer. So you could start asking around to all your friends, "Do you have updated Virus Software on your computer?" And then encourage them all to get AntiVirus software.

It's a forlorn hope at best, but at least it's a hope.

And, of course, if you don't have AntiVirus software yourself, you may be the one shooting yourself in the foot!