SPAM from oneself?

[bigsleepj]

On my Yahoo account I just got a spam e-mail from myself selling something. I know I didn't send it. What should I do?

Should I abandon the account, or it is some kind of spam-bot thing that doesn't attach its sender e-mail address to an e-mail (if that's possible)?

[uc pseudonym]

You may not be sending any spam at all - it's possible that the bot is just using your name as the sender. Are a bunch of spam messages showing up in your sent items folder? Has anyone on your contacts list complained about spam? If not, it's probably nothing to worry about.

[Warrior4Christ]

It's very easy for a [spamming] program to fill in the 'From' field to be the same address as the 'To' field. It doesn't mean you sent it. So I wouldn't worry about a breach of security on your end.
It's just not particularly useful if you know you don't remember sending spam to yourself (thus making it more obvious that it is spam).

[Mithrandir]

Good responses! Looks like most of this has been covered. I'm a bit surprised that Yahoo let that message back in, though. The anti-spam filter should have noticed that there was no reason you would send unauthenticated messages to yourself. o.O

[bigsleepj]

That is mostly encouraging. THanks for the information.

[termyt]

I would spam the user back mercilessly and then send him a virus. Let’s see him continue to spam you after that!

There are a number of email programs available out there that will let you send email with anything you want as the sender. It does not even need to be a valid email address. Whomever spammed you obviously had your email address, so it would be no problem to set yourself as the sender not only to you but to everyone else they sent the spam to.

Scary.

[ShiroiHikari]

Yeah, this has happened to my Yahoo account before. It's not really anything to worry about, but it did freak me the heck out when I first noticed it.