Is G Mail getting read by Spammers?

[ctabuk]

I'm seeing something quite disturbing -I'm getting Spam messages from people using User Names that I know and recognise - Like Alexander - Leslie (my wife) and dozens of others, including people copying my username - Is somebody reading my e-mails then trying to fool me that they are the genuine article??

[kgun]

1. I use gmail and think it is good, bud do not know how secure it is. It is good at filtering spam. It is not so difficult to
- guess a person's account name.
- sign up (make an account somewhere) with the name (nick) of a person you know, and send a seemingly reliable email from that person. That does not mean that that person has access to your account. (S)he only needs to vary (add a single character) in your real friend's email address. You post on different forums, and that makes it even easier to write a seemingly reilable message.

2. My best free email account is my 4 years old hotmail account (250 Mb - much more than I need). There I have a 100 % filter and only accepts emails from people that are on my address list. Then it is not enough to change / vary a single character in your real friend's email address to send an email from "your spammer friend". All other emails are automatically deleted. That means that the spam box is always empty. But these emails may be hijacked by a packet sniffer since they are not encrypted.

3. Only encrypted proffessional email services are fairly secure, and you should use a long (strong) password and change it frequently.