I have a question regarding AOL and screennames. Im not sure, but i think someone may be using my SN at a different location. A friend of mine received an email from "me" and it was sort of derogatory in nature. Something along the lines of "I never liked you and i think you suck". LOL Anyway, im positive its not a virus, so that leads me to my question. If someone is using my screen name to send emails, then by all means they could be using my account for free internet use. Could i or myself trace an email sent by this particular party? I realize that AOL to AOL emails dont include headers, so im not sure if i could. Lets just say it happens again, and she fowards me the email, what actions could then be taken on my part to find out the guilty party?

Well, there are two ways that I can think of right now of how they could steal your account, one is for you to download a backdoor virus (which u are sure of you didn't) and the other is for them to crack your account. I don't think there is a way to catch him/her but you could always call AOL to notify them. Best thing you can do right now is to change your Password.

there are also fake e-mail programs, that will make it look like it came from you. have your friend or you send the e-mail to aol, they should be able to trace it back to where it originated. since it should have the time/date stamp on it.

just a thought, for a quick fix change your password and e-mail at aol, tell them about the faked e-mail or hacked e-mail account. get a firewall to be sure you don't have a trojan password stealer, keylogger,etc.

Similar thing happened to a friend of mine about 6 weeks ago and I helped him, as he knew nothing about it being on his PC. Actually, I found it on the initial PC scan with AVG, when I first installed that on his PC. Can't recall what it was called, but it was a password stealing trojan of sorts and after AVG had found it, I set it to REPAIR, it did, and I told him to change all his passwords, which he did and that was all that became of it, as far as we could tell. Incidently, he HAD been hanging out in CHAT ROOMS and his antivirus has expired several months before and of course he knew nothing of it or didn't think it was important or somethin crazy. NOTE: Was the email from you, exactly, as per say from your email account, or was it from another spoofed account with just YOUR screen name used as the real name? It makes a differrence. Any one could sign up for email and use your screen name, either purposely or vindictively, especially if they know you and wanted it to appear to be you.