Urgent Help Needed!!!

[London Geezer]

Sorry about the drama sounding title, but i keep getting emails from my friends saying that i have sent them emails from my gmail address with viruses!! First of all, AS IF!! Second of all, what the heck is going on??
I don't know if i have a virus which somehow is getting into my gmail account and sends emails from there, and to be honest i don't even know which computer would have the virus since i access gmail from my home one, my work one and a few others too...

Does anyone know what's going on? And does anyone know if i can get a FREE and reliable antivirus which will clean up my system? I have norton, which finds 13 "risky" things on my system, but when i try to remove those things, it fails to do so...

Thank you so much!

 

[nutball]

It could be a third party sending the e-mails, it may not necessarily be your PC(s) sending out the viruses.

For example, some other person who knows you (ie. has your g-spot-mail address in their address book) has had their PC infected. The virus on that PC looks through their addressbook and uses the e-mail addresses it finds in there to send messages as if they were coming from you or anyone else in their address book (it's frighteningly trivial to make an e-mail look like it's comes from someone else).

So that PC would be sending out viruses with your g-mail in the From: address, and when the messages bounce they come back to you because the receiving machine assumes you sent them (because that's what the e-mail header says).

One thing to do would be to study the header of the original, virus-laden e-mail carefully, it may be possible to work out where they originating from (there will be a number of header lines with the names of the machines through which the e-mail has been relayed). That might tell you whether it's one of your PCs doing the sending, or not.

As for your question about anti-virus software ... I don't know of anything free I'm afraid, but I've seen others post recommendations here in the past, I'm sure they'll parachute in soon enough!

 

[Bouncing Zabaglione Bros.]

Does anyone know what's going on? And does anyone know if i can get a FREE and reliable antivirus which will clean up my system? I have norton, which finds 13 "risky" things on my system, but when i try to remove those things, it fails to do so...

Thank you so much!

You can download the latest Kaspersky 6 beta from here. Follow the path for the latest build and get the file kav_5_en.msi. Get Beta activation codes from the top level in the file betacodes.txt.

Although I agree with nutball, that it's probably an infected machine elsewhere that is taking your address from the owner's mail program and using it to send out spam.

 

[StefanS]

Antivir Personal Classic is freeware and works pretty reliable. I use it myself. http://www.free-av.com/

But as said before, it could have been somebody who has your mail adress in his adress book.