Hi Julie It’s highly unlikely it came from your machine at all. More then likely it came from someone else’s infected computer, but spoofs your email address. This is how virus “work around it”. When a computer gets infected, what some viruses will do is just go through the person’s address book and picks a “to” address, and a “from” address. Then repeats. So it “spoofs” who it actually comes from. This way it’s harder to track down sometimes who the infected computer was. As your contractor thinks it came from you, and your computer doesn’t show it going out at all. Yet some “mutual” contact you both know more then likely is where the data was “collected” from. This has some more info about it here - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Email_spoofing
Basically, as their “definition” says,… /quote Alice is sent an infected email which she opens, running the worm code. The worm code searches Alice's email address book and finds the addresses of Bob and Charlie. From Alice's computer, the worm sends an infected email to Bob, but forged to appear to have been sent by Charlie. In this case, even if Bob's system detects the incoming mail as containing malware, he sees the source as being Charlie, even though it really came from Alice's computer; meanwhile Alice may remain unaware that her computer has been infected. /end quote So more then likely all is fine on your computer, and it’s someone else that “pretended” to send out as you. (email addresses are very easy to “spoof”. I could quite easily post an email to wamug which “looks” like it’s come from you, but I’ve actually sent it from my computer. Obviously I won’t and most people wouldn’t as it’s against our nature to be malicious, but I’m just using that as an example to show what I mean). If however, you want to just check just incase you can run some of the free Virus checking software, and even Malware check just incase. Just be aware these can take many hours to run sometimes as it looks over all the files etc. And from my experience with client computers, it’s very very rare to find anything. (I’ve yet to have a client have a “real” virus on their computer in the 17 years of doing MacWizardry). Some of the free Virus checks that people recommend are - Sophos - https://home.sophos.com/free-mac-antivirus ClamXAV - https://www.clamxav.com Avast! - https://www.avast.com/en-au/free-mac-security MalwareBytes can be downloaded here - https://www.malwarebytes.com/mac/ Just running the trial of one of them is fine, as if you do run it to scan, then you can just remove it once finished. But as mentioned, it’s more then likely it will have originated from you in the first place, so your computer should be fine. We’re still pretty lucky in the Mac world for viruses (virii?) as we still really don’t get them. (and others may say they’re not running anything all the time either as has been the “normal” for many years. It’s not worth the “overhead” of computer resources or money.* *In some places, it’s worth having, just for peace of mind, or a “requirement” to have it in certain businesses/organisations, but in generally the Mac is still pretty safe. Others may disagree with this, but from experience I’ve yet to see anything to prove otherwise from my workings around the place. Hope all that info helps. Kind regards Daniel --- Daniel Kerr MacWizardry Phone: 0414 795 960 Email: <daniel AT macwizardry.com.au> Web: <http://www.macwizardry.com.au> **For everything Apple** NOTE: Any information provided in this email may be my personal opinion and as such should be taken accordingly, and may not be the views of MacWizardry. Any information provided does not offer or warrant any form of warranty or accept liability. It would be appreciated that if any information in this email is to be disseminated, distributed or copied, that permission by the author be requested. > On 20 Jun 2018, at 10:08 pm, Julie Bedford <jew...@iinet.net.au> wrote: > > > Hi All, > > Hoping someone can enlighten me …. > I had a call from one of our contractors today saying that he had received an > email from me yesterday, which was not for him. When I checked it out, I > didn’t send him an email. He said something similar happened last year. > Could this be a virus ? I use El Capitan and have held back upgrading to > the latest OS. Is there any software out there to rid me of this virus, if > that is what it is. Incidentally I have never sent this contractor an email, > so his address would not be in my system. > > Thanks > Jewels > > -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- > Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> > Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> > Settings & Unsubscribe - > <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug> -- The WA Macintosh User Group Mailing List -- Archives - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/archives.shtml> Guidelines - <http://www.wamug.org.au/mailinglist/guidelines.shtml> Settings & Unsubscribe - <http://lists.wamug.org.au/listinfo/wamug.org.au-wamug>