I have Live Mail 2012 build 16.4.3528.0331 installed with Microsoft Security Essentials with the latest updates installed.

This morning I found another piece of spam in my inbox (not unusual). The existence of the spam is not what worries me. It is the fact that it supposedly came from a deceased friend of mine who has been dead for almost a decade. That is what prompted me to check my list of contacts and sure enough, there was his name which I had never removed. Of course, the email address in the spam was different from his, but the name was identical.

Coincidence? I think not.

Obviously either I have settings in my PC that allowed a spammer to pick a name out of my contact list, or my spam/virus protection is not operating correctly.

Any insight here would be helpful.

And I am all for making spam a capital offense punishable by torture. When you figure out all the manhours wasted trying to wade thru all the spam received, or trying to recover from virus attacks, I think it warrants such a violent punishment.