How Did Viagra Take over my Email?

Hello,

Sorry for the humorous title, but it is true. For the first time ever I have implemented a small Mail Merge project in Word 2003 and outlook to send customized emails to people in Japan. The subject line and the email itself were both in Japanese.

One respondent sent me a screen shot of the email header they received. Instead of their email address showing, the only thing in the To: line was admin@viagra.com. I checked my database and the viagra email address is not in the database. I did a search in Outlook on all the sent messages and it did not appear there. I ran a full virus scan on my PC - and I am clean. I also ran a current scan for malware using the latest version of SpyBot - again I was clean.

Has anyone ever heard of this happening?

Is it possible that the respondent's computer is infected with something that would do this?

I am trying to isolate the cause to determine whether or not the Viagra switch was an isolated incident. I would appreciate any help or suggestions.

Thanks!
Chip

 

Hi Steve,

So far I have only heard of one case. I don't think it can be a translation problem because it was the email address that was changed. The email address is the only part of the message that is in English. I am going to run a full scan with Trend Micro on my PC soon - something that usually takes a few hours. I will post any interesting findings here. Thanks for your interest.

Chip

 

Hi Arie,

Great suggestion. I sent a request to my client to see if he can get this. The customer contacted my client, not me, with the issue. So I need to work through a third party. I will let you know what I find out.