How can I prevent someone using my website e-mail address to send spam to me?

Recently I have started receiving spam which appears to be sent from my own website e-mail address. I have an automatic forward on mail to that address which comes through to my personal mail. It obviously isn't difficult for anyone to find the website e-mail address, as this is the one I use for all my professional business and is advertised (and inevitably I get spam sent to it) but I don't understand how they make it appear that spam is sent FROM it. If I am receiving such mail, does it mean my address is being used to spam others, or do they just make it appear that it's my address when they send to me? And how, if at all, can I prevent this happening? I have read some of the previous answers to similar questions, but I don't have a virus (my antivirus is updated daily) and I'm not clear how this works.

How are you determining that it's your email sending it. If its just the name that appears then they only put that in to the response name of a different email address. That's easily done.

If you right click on the email address it's coming from and choose properties it will show you the actual email address that is sending it. You may find it's not yours.

If for some reason it is yours then someone has hacked into your email account and they know your password, change it immediately.

The safest password is alph numeric, more then 8 characters and not something someone that knows you can guess like a date, name, address etc.

The longer the better, it's harder to crack with crack programs. Also, for now make sure your email is not set to log in automatically just in case they are getting to it through your ip.

Once you find out who is doing it, report them to the email carrier that they are sending it from.

Glad I was able to help, another piece of advise if I may, for the next little while change it a few time to keep them guessing enough to take you off their distribution list... Report It