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Question

Hidden email address storage?

by Dec 5, 2011 9:09PM PST

I got hit last night and something sent out a SPAM email from my OE address book. I got four bounce-backs because of invalid email addresses. Addresses that had been deleted. Is there a hidden storage of old email addresses stored somewhere? Running XP Pro and OE6

Discussion is locked

8 Posts
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Answer
Wow!
by Forum moderator Dec 6, 2011 8:20PM PST

That's a new one to me and disturbing.

Any chance that it didn't hit your address book, but instead used and old email you had sent which had multiple recipients?

What about opening your address book externally and having a look. It is the wab.exe file.

Alternatively, open wab.exe and export the contents to either a text file or a .csv file, (comma separated values), then open that file in Notepad?

Other than that, no idea.

Mark

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Re: address book
by Kees_B Forum moderator Dec 6, 2011 8:54PM PST

Minor correction: it's not wab.exe. It's something like <username>.wab.
But I'm sure Wayne knows that.

Kees

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Interesting
by MarkFlax Forum moderator Dec 7, 2011 4:02AM PST

Mine was simply called wab.exe in my XP. You had me guessing so I just checked my XP system, (haven't booted it up for months and it still works great), and my Address Book properties shows the path as C:\Program files\OUTLOOK EXPRESS\wab.exe

Mind you, I never used OE so my address book was only used as a generic one, and not for emails.

Mark

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A search for *.wab . . .
by Coryphaeus Dec 6, 2011 10:54PM PST

found only wayne.wab. No useful information there.

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Nothing useful?
by MarkFlax Forum moderator Dec 7, 2011 4:06AM PST

Does that mean nothing in there, no contacts at all?

If your contacts are there, what happened when you exported to a text file or .csv file? If this thing you got caught by did use the address book then perhaps the raw data will show entries that the application itself doesn't display.

Mark

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Address book is fine . . .
by Coryphaeus Dec 7, 2011 5:46AM PST

But it still doesn't explain where those old email addresses came from.

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Then I'm stumped.
by MarkFlax Forum moderator Dec 7, 2011 7:02PM PST

Wayne, other than the bounce backs, how do you know you were hit? Any other signs? Any emails in your Sent folder or any other indications?

If you still have the bounced emails, can you open one via View > Page Source, (or Message source, or similar), to see the raw data, and see if there are any clues there?

We know that email addresses can be spoofed in a myriad of ways and I wonder if this is one where some spammer has sent emails to recipients and spoofed the return address with yours. The problem could be elsewhere and not your email account. EG, some 'other' recipient you know has let their guard down and a multi-recipient email of theirs has been obtained by a spammer.

This spoofing and spamming is something that very often is impossible to trace back and solve. And in such cases the general advice is, forget it and it will die down eventually.

Mark

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Me too . . .
by Coryphaeus Dec 8, 2011 3:21AM PST

Only bounce backs. But I sent a BCC email to everyone in my address book telling them what happened. I got several back saying they did get the spam email.

It's forgotten.

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