Outgoing Mail Virus, Yes, Virus!

My accounts, save mobileme, are all pop if that means anything.

Does that mean your Mobileme account is IMAP? For that account, do you see in Mail > Preferences > Accounts > Mailbox Behaviors references to things being stored on the server? Those are only available for IMAP, not POP.

Over at the left in your Mail app Mailboxes list, is there anything listed under MobileMe?

I get that you think this was responsible for the outgoing activity but if so why did it stop when I installed SL?

I do think that is the most likely explanation, but I don't think it's possible know exactly why without having your old installation and all its mail settings available to examine (not to mention good info on what exactly was appearing on your screen) so it's kind of a moot point.

Let us know if you see anything strange in Snow Leopard.

sorry!! Your right. I clicked to fast!

Message was edited by: powerbook1701

Today Little Snitch alerted me that Mail tried to contact Yahoo’s smtp server by itself. It has never done that before. (I never use my Yahoo account for sending e-mails, hence the alarm.) I immediately set Little Snitch to require permission to let Mail gain access to smtp servers. After that Mail also tried to access all other smtp servers without any user interaction.

So, I don’t know, but, maybe there is a mail virus after all.

I found this discussion because I found Mail’s behaviour suspicious and wanted to know more about it.

Does anybody know a reason why Mail should contact smtp servers on its own? Like I said I didn’t do anything and this has never happened before.

Addendum:
By now Mail has repeatedly tried to access smtp servers without any identifiable reason.

dependingn on how you set it up, sometimes imap, etc will check for new mail?

It seems from personal experience that Mail 4.x routinely checks the status of all SMTP servers you have listed, whether you are using them or not. I think this is a change in Snow Leopard to counter act the tendency of Leopard and Mail 3.x to take a long time to send a message with some ISP/SMTP due to needing to freshen the connection to the SMTP. In doing this routine check it is actually not attempting to send.

You list that you are using Snow Leopard even though you have posted in the Mail and AB forum for Leopard -- is this a recent Upgrade.

Ernie

Message was edited by: Ernie Stamper

Thanks, Ernie, for your reply! I didn’t realize this forum was Leopard only--my mistake.

I know that Mail checks SMTP servers when you open the "Accounts" preference pane in Mail.

I have never seen Mail checking SMTP servers without that, though. And this happened only on my iMac, not on my MacBook.

But maybe you’re right and I was just overly suspicious.

I learned of it when someone I had helped with a private network noticed a "suspicious" checking of his SMTP. Turned out to be me, even though I only had the SMTP still listed in my preferences even though no account was enabled. Seems only to have come about with Snow Leopard.

He had no way to know it was me, but complained to my ISP, who briefly suspended me until I identified myself, and then they gave me enough info for me to know to contact him. My current ISP was not the one I was using when I was previously in communication with him, and using a temporary account he gave me, so my current IP was completely unknown to him. This weird, unsettling experience makes me fairly confident about this explanation.

Ernie