Unknown names in my email recipients list

Tringa

Tringa

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Dave
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I use Outlook for my emails and if I look at a list of my contacts all of them are ones I know - people or companies I have dealt with, and no unknown ones.

If, however, I start a new email and begin typing the address of the recipient once I have typed the first letter of the recipient's address a drop down box appears with contacts beginning with that letter.

This is what I would expect and has, as far as I know, always happened. Recently the drop down box contains not only the email addresses of known contacts but also sometimes addresses of people I have never heard of. Sometimes the addresses are of the form "namexx@zzz.com; sometimes they just random numbers/symbols@zzz.com.

Does anyone have any idea why or how this has happened.

Thanks

Dave
 
Likely you have been hacked or one of your devices compromised. Spammers will use your email address to send to load of spam, delete from your sent items and move on... I would change the password and run something like anti-malware bites on any devices you use to access it.
 
I don't know the version of Outlook, Neil. I gone to Help in Outlook but can't find 'About Microsoft Outlook'. I've run Avast, Malwarebytes and SpyBot S&D and all have come up OK. I haven't noticed any problem its just a bit confusing.

Dave
 
  1. Inside Outlook, Type the email address you wish to clear from the cache until Outlook displays it as shown above.
  2. Press the down arrow key to select the email address and hit the delete button.
  3. All Done. That entry should now be gone from the Outlook Auto Complete cache.
 
Byker28i said:
  1. Inside Outlook, Type the email address you wish to clear from the cache until Outlook displays it as shown above.
  2. Press the down arrow key to select the email address and hit the delete button.
  3. All Done. That entry should now be gone from the Outlook Auto Complete cache.
Click to expand...


To make doubly sure you can delete the Outlook auto complete file (nickname file).

It's the .nk2 file.

Search for it and delete it to start your auto complete list again.
 
The version of Outlook might be 2007 or 2010, definitely not later; it is an old machine.

I couldn't delete the unknown entries. The only way I can see them is as in the first post. They aren't in the Contacts List so I can't delete them from there. Could not find the .nk2 file - searched all the drives and got 'no file found'

As I said these unknowns don't seem to be causing a problem but it is odd.

Dave
 
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