Your Gmail account might be spoofed if you get bounce messages for emails that look like they were sent from your account, or if you get a reply to a message you never sent.
How email spoofing happens
When you send an email, a sender name is attached to the message. However, the sender name can be forged.
When spoofing happens, your address can be used as the sender address or the reply-to address.
Troubleshoot spoofing problems
Why this happens
Some spammers use software programs to create random lists of email addresses to use in spoofing.
If a spammer spoofs your Gmail address, you might get reports of delivery failures for emails that look like they were sent by you.
How to fix the problem
Because these emails are created outside of Gmail, Gmail isn't able to stop the spammers from spoofing your address.
If you get these kinds of emails, report them as spam.
Why this happens
Some spammers try to send emails with a fake "From" address. Spammers hope that if the email looks like it was sent from your address, it won't get marked as spam.
If you see an email in Spam that replaces your email address with "Me," someone tried to put your address in the "From" field of the message.
- Follow the steps in the Gmail security checklist.
- Report the problem to Gmail.