is this a virus or not?!

[billb]

one of our users has a second email address which is on our website as a first contact. someone has sent her a mail saying every day they get a mail from this address with no attachment but with some smileys on like the recent big virus. I have scanned her machine and its 100% fine and should always have been as we have corporate sophos av which updates twice a day.

soooo is this a virus and if so if its not on her machine where is it? the web server is hosted outside our network. or is it someone else that is using our address? confused

[ATG]

I know bugger all about system security or email, so this could be a red herring. However, I've recently written some error logging stuff that sends out e-mails using SMTP. The implementation lets you fill in whoever should appear as the sender of the e-mail. Therefore, at a superficial level, I could make the e-mail appear to come from anyone I chose. Perhaps this is what is happening in your case?

[pdV6]

Somebody else has a virus. This 3rd party has your email in their address book and its sending out crud to people pretending its from you.

[Mr E]

Yup. There's no reason an Email has to come from the person listed in the "From" field.