A virus that generates email from sites you visited?

[tribrats]

I received several emails that were spam. I wouldn't have given it a second thought and deleted them if one didn't catch my attention. I have it set up so that emails that have snopes in them are labeled so I can just click and call them all up. I checked the ones that have come in and the addresses for all the emails that are the same kind are all sites I've visited in the last day or two.

I've run a full scan for viruses, maleware, addware, etc. They didn't find anything. I'm super vigilant as to what goes on my computer. All cookies, programs, etc. are set to ask me first. I don't open anything I don't know who it's from or what it is. I regularly purge the cache and all temp files.

Here's the email:

Jeanie Crain <TommiewastebasketGoodrich@snopes.com>
totribrats@xxxxxxx.xxx
date
Aug 30, 2007 8:32 AM
subject
Fw: Thank you, we accepted your company business loan request If you have your own business and wish IMMEDIATE ready money to spend ANY way you like or require Extra money to give the business a boost or require A low interest loan - NO STRINGS ATTACHED, here is best deal we can offer you THIS NIGHT (hurry, this lot will expire TODAY):

$34,000+ loan

Hurry, when our deal is gone, it is gone. Simply Call Us Free on 877-292-6890

[Jonny T]

could be a cross site scripting exploit.

[BluesScale]

Doesn't sound like cross side scripting to me.

Something could be using your cookies as a data source. Would you like me to do some checks on your PC, Tribrats? If so, you can ping me at the address that you usually use and I will help

Thanks

Blues.

[snopes]

Our site is quite popular, and we process/generate a lot of mail (which puts addresses from the snopes.com domain into a *lot* of inboxes and address books), so it's common to see virus/spam messages that use a spoofed return address in the snopes.com domain. Your receiving them doesn't really have any direct connection with whether you've visited this site or not.

- snopes

[tribrats]

I wasn't sure if it did or not. Just thought it strange that all the ones from that group were from sites I had been at including a couple not so popular ones. And wondered if there was a means of tracking and inserting site names into them. This site just happened to be the one that raised the flag.

I just figured I picked something up somewhere and missed it.

ETA: Blues, I sent you an email

ETAA: Not saying it was them because I surf quite a bit but the kids have been using the computer more too. It would be very easy for me to miss a notification the last few weeks.

[Tootsie Plunkette]

I hadn't been using either of my two domains for email, but just recently set up a 'postmaster' address and one personal address for each domain, though I have yet to use them for any outbound email.

The postmaster addresses have been getting tons of "undeliverable email" messages generated by spam sent using my domains (and some strange name combinations) as spoofed addresses. I had to set up some rules in Outlook to keep literally thousands of these messages from clogging up my inbox.

From what research I've done, there doesn't seem to be any way for me to stop it, and it's not due to anything I've done (or not done).