WRONG PERSONAL NAME associated or shown on hotmail, live.ca, outlook, gmail

[OneBigNewbie]

I recently been informed by all of my friends that the name shown on ALL my e-mails sent to them** were showing a wrong name. The name shown as the sender (which is supposed to be my real personal name in the past) are now showing a name of a STRANGER (as Zhao Liang Wei - looks like to be a Chinese somewhere).

** all these e-mail were legitimately sent by me, since I composed and sent them myself.

The e-mail addresses involved are
- @Hotmail.com
- @live.ca
- @outlook.com
- @gmail.com

I have checked all the SETTINGS in Microsoft's hotmail, live.ca and outlook, and also gmail, they all show all my correct personal name.

I use Win 7 Professional on one computer, and Win XP on another. They all have this e-mail problem when I sent e-mail using them.

I have e-mailed Microsoft for help, and they did not respond. It is impossible to ask Google/Gmail for personal help (because they do not have that facility, even if you want to report to them a finanical scam).

Other than that I use a Cellphone and use the text facility and WhatsApp on my Samsung S4, and occasionally go to Youtube with a secure connection, I do not subscribe to any of the social media networks, such as Facebook, Twitters, etc.

Appreciate if you can help to reset that, because I have registered and used one of the above e-mail addresses for banking, credit cards, investments, government tax reporting, internet stores (such as Amazon, Chapters, eBay, etc), and many other registries of personal interest such as Virtual Dr, etc.

Any new e-mail account set-up by me legitimately has inherited the name of this STRANGER !

Has my identity been high-jacked?
How to reset it?
I am not interested to investigate who this STRANGER is (with a possible hit of over 10 billion suspects, it is nearly impossible to find out).

Thanks,

[Train]

Have them check the properties and see who the email actually is from.

I get those type from time to time and they are spam/phishing that have gotten names from the internet somewhere.

[OneBigNewbie]

All the e-mails my friends received are legitmate e-mails I composed myself and on private and oonfidental matters, sent from me directly on my computer/notebook. I don't think they are 'phishing' e-mails.

But they all show the name of a STRANGER as sender (the STRANGER'S NAME IS ZHAO LIANG WEI) instead of my own personal name.

I just cannot find a place to correct it, so I e-mail Microsoft Corporation, and I could not find a place at Google Inc. who I can ask for help. So far Microsoft did not respond (usually, they would, if a internet scam involving their hotmail/live/outlook, has been reported to them).

[jdc2000]

Have some of them view the COMPLETE e-mail header, and copy and paste that information in a e-mail to you. That would help in determining what might be happening.

[OneBigNewbie]

JDC2000, I have no place (an e-mail address) that I can send anything to Microsoft or Google (gmail) to make them see what I am complaining about and how wrong my e-mail address accounts are, and to make them respond to me.

If you know their e-mail addresses, please post them here.

Also, what is this phenomenon called? (Like a disease, there got to be a name for it. EBOLA, GRABOLA?)...

Thanks,

[Train]

Have them open their email, r-click one and select view source.
That will show who it is from in the Return-Path: line

[Midknyte]

JDC2000, I have no place (an e-mail address) that I can send anything to Microsoft or Google (gmail) to make them see what I am complaining about and how wrong my e-mail address accounts are, and to make them respond to me.

jdc2000 said to get your friends to send you the email header from the emails you sent them.

This is how you would get it in Gmail:
Open the email in question
Click on the drop down arrow by Reply and choose Show Original
Copy and paste the header info into an email back to you

Did you scan your systems for viruses and malware? If so, what apps did you use?

Which browser are you using?

I know the issues is occurring on multiple computers/OSes, but it doesn't hurt to check the basics.

[jdc2000]

What happens when you send an e-mail from one of your addresses to that same account? Does it also show up with the same incorrect name? What about from one of your e-mail addresses to a different one of your e-mail addresses?

I am assuming that you have not used the same password for all of your e-mail accounts.

[fink]

Also try creating a new email acc't with one of those providers and see if emails from it also have that name.

That's pretty weird. If it was just one computer I'd say it was infected but having that happen from two is unusual. Have you tried accessing the email sites with another browser? Is it possible you copied browser settings or a profile from one computer to the other? I'm thinking that if one computer/browser was infected with a hijacker then a transfer to another computer would have moved it over as well.

What happens if you send an email from another place like work or a friends computer?

[OneBigNewbie]

Adding new e-mail account with any one of those providers would carry this STANGER's name on any e-mail sent after a few days (I have tried that, that is the reason I have set up 3 email accounts with Microsoft : hotmail, live.ca, and outlook).

Also, sending any e-mail to anyone legitimately by me using any new or old e-mail account,
- on any browser, (I have tried IE, Chrome, and Firefox)
- on any computer (even 2 of my friends new computers using Windows 8.1)
carries that STRANGER's name as sender.

Here is the example of the e-mail header:

ZHAO LAING WEI [that STRANGER'S name]
[email protected] (my legitimate e-mail address, e.g. [email protected]
- where "johndoe" is the full spelling of my personal name).

And also, at one time, my adult daughter had phoned me and asked me of the identity of a person whose avatar (a picture of an ugly Chinese baby girl) appeared in my e-mail to my adult daughter... I had no idea of what she was talking about until I went over to my daughter's place and read that e-mail showing that STRANGER's name and that avatar. Since that incident, I created my logo (a graphic containing the alphabet "K") and added onto my profile (and that avatar showing that ugly Chinese baby girl did not show up anymore, I believe).

My serious concern is that I frequently communicate with and deal financially with a few dozens of very influential persons/companies in the world (and they know who I am by way of mutual exchange of identity documents such as passports, driving licenses, citizenship identity card, health card, etc. through international law firms which had met me in person as verification), and they suddenly saw that STRANGER's name on my e-mails, now they started questioning my lawyers if they had done full due diligence on my identity documents. Some of these persons have been kind enough to phone me to report the incidences of the appearance of that STRANGER's name.

The only place that I can see not yet being affected by this "IDENTITY ERROR" is on Skype because I do not use my personal name on Skype as Identifier (Skype Name). although I have been using Skype without any change to my Skype Name since 2006.

So far I have not been approached by anyone asking me for any ransom to clear out this STRANGER's name. If in that ever occurs, I would go to report it to the law enforcement agencies.

Again, even though all these are very obvious errors in their product (and not due to my mis-use or abuse of their products or services), reporting this to Microsoft Corporation (through their e-mail/outlook help desk) did not result in any response. There is absolutely no way of reporting it by e-mail to Google Inc. or to Gmail for any help.

[fink]

What I would do is set up one more new acc't but from a different computer (friend's, work, whatever) Then use it a few times from that/those computers and see what happens. Then if it doesn't display those strange problems start using it from your home computers and see if that changes.

If it does then that, to me, points to something hijacking/infecting the computers on your home network. At that point you could do a comprehensive scan in our intensive care forum on at least one of them and see if anything is found.

In the meantime change the password to all of your email acct's and anything else that's important esp banking, tax, credit cards, etc... and use different passwords for each. To be extra careful I'd make those password changes from a computer not at home in case there's a keylogger somewhere in this mystery.

There are also a number of reliable but more obscure free email sites like
http://www.linuxwaves.com/FREE_Email/
It would be interesting to see if an acc't there exhibits the same problems.

Bottom line... if I had a problem like this that was affecting my privacy, security, work and finances and there was any inkling that my computers at home were infected I would not hesitate for a second to back up my data and docs etc and immediately turn off my home network, format the drives on all my computers and start from scratch because it would be a mission critical situation and ultimately probably would be easier and faster than doing a series of scans on each computer over a few days.