Everytime my sister sends an email (her address is a @comcast.net
address), the receipient get the email showing it is from:
mcgdogmcgdogmcgdogmcgdogmcgdogmcgdogmcgdo@no.domain.spam
Her email address looks nothing like this! She can't find out why or
what to do to get it off her computer. The computer has been checked
and rechecked for viruses using Macafee online service. There is no
attachment to the emails. But she has been having computer problems
since this started, and the computer techs think is has to do with
this, but don't know how to fix or get rid of it.
Any solutions, suggestions?

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Request for Question Clarification by lazerfx-ga on 08 Aug 2002 12:18 PDT

What e-mail client is your sister using?  This is pretty easy to
change in the main e-mail clients...  If I know what client she is
using, I can provide you with the instructions on how to change it.

Hi, thanks for the question.  A little bit of background, first:

When you send an e-mail, a tag is added to the start of the e-mail
that says, "This is where the e-mail is from."  Let us say you are
micky@mouse.com, this tag would contain 'mickey@mouse.com'.  This from
tag does not need to be the same as your real e-mail address... let us
say you couldn't access your own e-mail, and used another e-mail
address.  You could change the 'from' tag so that it still appeared to
come from you.

So, the fictional mickey@mouse.com could send his e-mail from
donald@duck.com, and yet make his e-mail look as though it had come
from mickey@mouse.com by changing the from-tag.

So how do you change it?  I have searched and found a couple of
tutorials that detail how to do this:

Freeserve Technical Support
http://www.freeserve.com/help/email/sendingreceiving/changingthefromname.htm
[Please Note: This document is designed by the UK ISP Freeserve, and
as such, it refers to freeserve SMTP and e-mail servers.  Don't worry
about this, the instructions will still be very much the same for you]

Changing your Email Reply Address is Outlook or Outlook Express
http://www.jamesshuggins.com/h/web1/email_reply_address.htm
This is a slightly more general article, and recaps what I have said
above, as well as including instructions on how to change your e-mail
address.

I hope this clears up any confusion your sister may have about her
e-mail address, and that she can soon be sending e-mails with a real
reply address on them.

LazerFX-GA

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Clarification of Answer by lazerfx-ga on 09 Aug 2002 14:17 PDT

Unfortunately, in the previous answer, I forgot to put in my search
strategy.

I searched for:
"outlook express" email change
://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&q=%22outlook+express%22+email+change

Again, I hope this helps :)

LazerFX-GA

The From: address does not have to be the same as the persons outbound
mail server account address. I also use comcast, and have created
several outbound accounts in my mailer, for the various Email
addresses from serveral domains.
they are then sent out thru my comcast acct. Incidentaly some ISP's
block this, but I know comcast does not. The exact proceedure depends
on the software she uses.

Have your sister run a virus check on:

http://www.trendmicro.com/free_tools/

It's free and Trend Micro tends to be ahead of the field on viruses.
At least that is what a Dell Computer Technician told me.

Sorry Google Answers Team. Word of mouth can't be documented.

webbob-ga

She is using Outlook Express. Thanks for the help.

Hi, pigpenpub,

It looks like someone changed your sister's From: line. A lot of
people do this when posting to Usenet or in other public areas to
avoid getting lots of spam. It doesn't, however, make a lot of sense
to do this with your email, as this address isn't publicly viewable.

Your question seems to imply that her settings used to be correct,
which would indicate that someone changed her email settings, maybe as
a joke or in a misguided attempt to protect her from spam. I'm not
familiar with any viruses that would cause this kind of thing, but
that's not to say it's impossible.

The closest thing I'm aware of to this is the Klez virus, which
spreads itself by sending emails to everyone in the infected person's
address book, munging the from: line in the process. Again, I'm fairly
certain this is not the problem with your sister's computer, but you
can read up on Klez here:

http://www.osborne.com/virus_alert/

So, probably all you need to do is change her account settings to show
the correct email address in her From: line. I'm not all that familiar
with Outlook, but searching on "outlook express" "account preferences"
leads to a number of links that might be of help.

Here's a walkthrough from an ISP for setting up a new account:

http://pop3.reference.directnic.com/outlook_ex.html

Don't follow the instructions on the page, but this will give us an
idea of what the options look like.

How exactly to get to this screen depends on which version of Outlook
Express she has and what operating system she's using, but see if this
works:

1. Select the Accounts option from the Tools menu. 
2. Select her account name, then select Properties.
3. Locate the option for her email address, which will be the
"mcgdogmcgdog..." one, delete that, and add her real one.  Don't
change anything else.
4. Save your changes, and send a test message. (You can just send a
test email to the same account to make sure that everything's working
OK.)

I'm not at all familiar with Outlook Express, so if this doesn't work,
you may want to try searching on "outlook express" "mail account"
"from: line" and the version number and operating system to try to
find details on how to locate this on her system.

Good luck,
Lisa.