There has been a rash of fishing emails, where it appears that emails are being "sent" by residents to their email lists. The latest is from Manila or the Phillipines and asks for money to "rescure' the resident.
Has their email account been compromised? Not likely. Actual "profit-motive" companies exist around the world that use various techniques, from trolling the internet to installing worms on a individual computers, to wholesale invasion of government or corporate web sites, to create large databases of email addresses and relationships between email addresses. These lists are sold at so much per thousand entries, to "perps" that are sending out the fishing emails.
For an example, see http://www.downloademail.net/9/email-list-part-6420/6627.html. Browse there incognito (Google "browsing incognito" to find out how to do it. The specifics vary from browser to browser.) In general, google your email to see where it is visible to public search engines. (These companies use their own methods.)
So there is nothing you can do to prevent this. It is has already happened.
In the future, change your user name (att has this function, so the email goes to your real account but you send the email under another user name). You can also change your email provider entirely. After doing that, change the "from" in the email to show that you are sending the email from the old account. Move all your contacts out of your old account. That way, only your "front" account is compromised.
There are other techniques you can use, depending on your expertise and patience. I'll summarize these techniques and provide links to detailed instructions in a future post.
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