Last night i got 5 failed emails sent which i never sent and found another 3 this morning to people i have never heard of, can anyone share any light on how this could have happened.

Is it a webmail account (hotmail, Aol, etc.)? It sounds like it's been hijacked. Change your password to something completely unrelated to the existing one and it should stop.

It is a Bt yahoo account

I have just changed my password, would that help

Also if you have a secret question/answer, change it too.

Also change the email address any hints or reset instructions are sent to.

I think you have been lucky; a friend got locked out of her account entirely, they changed the password, secret question, and back-up email address on her Hotmail account

No, there's nothing you can do, it has nothing to do with the account being hi-jacked either.

Someone has used your email address as the "from" address, therefore any bounced mail (most likely spam) will come back to you, not the person that sent it originally. The Company gets it all the time (mail rules set to trash incoming NDRs and not to issue them either) It's not hard to spoof the from address and is one of the most common things to be done when sending spam.

Someone has used your email address as the "from" address, therefore any bounced mail (most likely spam) will come back to you, not the person that sent it originally.

This started off in the States on Hotmail accounts, coming from their address bbok. Son's FIL was almost on point of taking all of his contacts out opf the address book to stop it.It has happened on a minor scale on Yahoo- I got one from the wife, which turned out to be spam from some one else . Changed her password and it stopped .

Last night i got 5 failed emails sent which i never sent and found another 3 this morning to people i have never heard of, can anyone share any light on how this could have happened.

VWD granted it is a possible hack, but reading the original post (always a good idea apparently) you'll see that there are mails from people not heard of, i.e. not in the contacts list. ;)

No, there's nothing you can do, it has nothing to do with the account being hi-jacked either.

Someone has used your email address as the "from" address, therefore any bounced mail (most likely spam) will come back to you, not the person that sent it originally. The Company gets it all the time (mail rules set to trash incoming NDRs and not to issue them either) It's not hard to spoof the from address and is one of the most common things to be done when sending spam.

This ^^^^^^

Have a look in your sent items folder. If they are there, then your account was compromised, but they almost certainly won't be. Someone else has just been using your address in the "from" field.

VWD granted it is a possible hack, but reading the original post (always a good idea apparently) you'll see that there are mails from people not heard of, i.e. not in the contacts list. ;)

As was the Hotmail one. The yahoo one I got from wife was as yuo described .