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Thunderbird started sending several random messages
Thunderbird started sending several random messages I am using the latest version of thunderbird on a desktop computer with windows 7, and out of the blue thunderbird started sending random emails from my primary pop3 account with large attachments. The messages are attaching pictures from old emails. I am getting somewhere in the range of 50-100 emails trying to go out. I am not sure how to find out who the recipient is supposed to be. Thunderbird is giving me error messages due to the size of the messages trying to send. The pictures that are trying to be sent are going into the users/name/appdata/local/temp folder. I delete them, restart thunderbird, and after about a minute the send failed errors come up and the same pictures repopulate in that folder. I suspected a worm or virus, however, I have ran antivirus, malware bytes, etc. All say there is no virus. I even had a level 2 tech at norton check my system, twice. I have the same email account with thunderbird setup on my laptop (windows 7) and my phone, both are operating fine so I'm pretty sure it is not on Yahoo end. i have sbcglobal.com email. Does anyone have any ideas what is happening.
Wšě wotmołwy (8)
Is there anything in the outbox folder in Thunderbird.... all outgoing mail goes there, so if it is not appearing there, I actually doubt the send is occurring from Thunderbird.
Have you rebooted your computer? If not I suggest you do. it might be that there has been some sort of accidental dragging of pictures to a mail icon, or a right click send to that has be sent to mail instead of something else on the menu.
Matt. Thank you for the reply and for your assistance in trying to help me. I do not see an outbox folder, is that what you are referring to? Should it be a sub folder off in box?
I have literally Rebooted the system 20 times. With all of the anti virus scans and trying to make sure that there was no virus, there have been very many reboots. There are many pictures that the system is trying to send that I don't even know where they came from, attachments on different emails I have received. They are not in any of the picture galleries that I have on my machine they are just in email I guess from somewhere in the past. When this 1st happened before i caught it the system sent a lot of emails that did get through and fortunately they all went to my wife. As far as I can tell they didn't go anywhere else. Which is strange in itself. I would think that if I was infected with some sort of virus or worm that it would be sending Spam out to other people not items from past emails that I have received and only to one of my contacts. I ran another virus scan today and the Norton level 2 technician went through my system again and does not see a virus Of any kind. My virus scan did not turn up any virus either.
Thanks Evan
When I say this happed before, I meant to say the first time I noticed that it sent a bunch of emails to my wife. Before I noticed something was going on. My wife called and asked me why did I forward all these emails from my buddy dan.I Don't know if it matters but I think most of the emails that it sent out were forwarded from another of one of my contacts. I cant say for sure all of them were from the same contact, at least 95%. I Deleted every email from that contact and even blocked him on the Yahoo server. Now it's sending pictures from other emails that I received from other contacts. Every time I open it to see if I have solved the problem, I am immediately clicking the work offline button. So I am not really 100% sure what it is trying to send. I do know that temp folder gets literally a 100 pictures in it.
Let's approach this one bit at a time.
Start Thunderbird in offline mode. That would best be done using the windows run dialog (windowskey + R) instead of the normal shortcut to start Thunderbird.
"C:\Program Files (x86)\Mozilla Thunderbird\Thunderbird" -offline
or the following command line for 64 bit Thunderbird
"C:\Program Files\Mozilla Thunderbird\Thunderbird" -offline
are the commands to enter in the run dialog, depending on if you have a 32 or 64 bit version of windows. If you don't know, just try one and then the other if the first does not start Thunderbird. One should work to start Thunderbird.
Additional command line options are listed here if you have an interest in what can be done with the command line.
Enforce offline startup I would suggest once you have Thunderbird running is offline mode that you go to Options > Advanced > Network and disk space and click the offline button. Set the manual state on startup to offline.
Now no mail will be sent anywhere or received and you have time to poke around and see exactly what is happening and restart Thunderbird as required.
Outbox You will find the outbox folder under "Local folders" in Thunderbird. Despite you possibly having many accounts in Thunderbird, there is but one outbox.
TMP files A standard part of assembling an email once it is "send" by clicking the send button is to create a number of temp files in the systems temp folder. These are typically files with names starting with NS designating them as "Netscape" temp files from the distant past when Thunderbird was a part of Netscape Navigator and later Netscape suite. One in particular that gets mentioned more than others is nstmp.HTML as that is the body of the email that is being built and cam actually be displayed in a browser because it is HTML. So if you are finding image files, you should also be seeing an HTML file that will offer clues.
Addons and other settings Go to the troubleshooting information on the help menu.
- Check the entry there for remote processes and extensions. What is listed? ('Note ' you can drag over the text with your mouse to highlight it and Ctrl+C will copy it so you can paste into a reply on the forum)
- Also in the troubleshooting information you should see "Security Software". What is shown under that heading?
- Further down the troubleshooting information you will see "Important Modified Preferences" at the end of that listing you might see "Important Modified Preferences" check to see if it is there. Not what it contains. That can be for later if required.
- Is anything listed under "Important Locked Preferences" this is normally empty. But we are looking for the abnormal.
I think that is about it for now. Get beck with those replies and perhaps this can go further forward.
Matt. I want to thank you for trying to help me. I will try your suggestions tomorrow morning after I get off work.
Thanks again
Evan
Matt: Thanks again for your help. I will try to give you answers to your questions as best that I can. In the temp folder I am getting 154 files that are populating with the name nsemai-xxx.eml. with the xxx being a number from 1 to 154. Strange, during one instance, I caught it happening and I did see in excess of 200+ for the number, however, they went away on their own. I am also getting ,jpg .xlsx, pdf ping files in there with a names for example nsemail-2.jpg. There are no HTML files in there. Whenever this happens I get about 154 error messages from thunderbird that says the following error. See screen shot.
Sending of message failed. Failed due to unexpected error 804b0010. No description is available This message could not be sent using Outgoing Server (SMTP) smtp.att.yahoo.com for an unknown reason. Please verify that your outgoing server (SMTP) settings are correct and try again.
- Attached is a screen shot of the extensions in troubleshooting page. However, when I go into tools, add on, extentions it says
"Legacy extensions must be updated to be compatible with Thunderbird 68.5.0 Learn More"
There is nothing there. Not sure if there is supposed to be. - I have attached two screen shots of the modified preferences. - There is nothing populating in the outbox at all that I have seen. - There is nothing under important locked preferences. - remote processes has nothing there. - I do not see a security section in troubleshooting help page.
Interestingly enough I noticed that while I am offline and performing what you ask. Nearly everytime the temp folder gets populated and the errors come up on thunderbird the Norton antivirus software pops up a window that says nsmail.doc is not safe and has been removed. Simultaneously the nsmail.doc shows up in temp and then goes away. Is this a virus that norton has not caught or knows about. Is that possible? I now see that there are several forums that make reference to nsmail. Is this a virus or something that thunderbird creates and norton does not know what to do with?
Please let me know.
Some odd notes. These probably don't help.
You are now seeing two issues.
1, the send error. This is actually Yahoo refusing to send mail using your password. This has been brought about by a change in their offering that has coincided with your issues. The short of that issue is you must use oAuth as the authentication method in the account setting (including SMTP account settings) or use the ATT recommended settings with their odd password arrangement.
You may need to check if cookies are enabled, you appear to be running the alarmist baby of the anti virus world. It raises paranoia about cookies to silly levels and turn them off if it can. oAuth does not work with out cookies. I suggest you leave this error for the moment as it is not hurting as it is stopping you sending these weird emails.
2. I see nothing in the setting to trigger any issues. Your problem with the add-ons is not something I understand, you have lightning installed, and it should appear in the addon manager in the extensions tab.
3. From what I am seeing you probably do have some sort of malware. Or Norton is just arbitrarily removing doc files because they might be an issue. I would like to think that Norton actually has a reason. Perhaps you need to have a look in the Norton logs and see why it is removing the doc file as what it says might be illuminating.
I would also strongly suggest you try the following.
- Scanning your system with another product such as malwarebytes.
- Doing a disk cleanup using a tool such as the one built into windows. I see you are using windows 7 so try this as it covers most windows versions, https://neosmart.net/wiki/disk-cleanup/
Matt
I did run malwarebytes and another adware or something like that. They both found something and I let it quarantine the files. Rebooted and tried again. Same story. As they did no good except make my wordperfect program not work I uninstalled it.
Are you saying norton is not a good antivirus. If that is the case I can buy another any try it. Do you have a suggestion?
I have thunderbird setup on my laptop with the exact same settings and it has been working fine. It also is win 7. Same server settings.
Any idea what to do next?