As others have mentioned, identifying a machine by e-mail address is highly suspect. It would be the equivalent of saying that a letter you got in the regular mail had to be from a house because the return address written on the envelope was that house's address. There are a number of examples you can find where your e-mail address can be used to send something that isn't coming directly from a machine you have that e-mail set up on that are even legitimate. Online greeting cards would be a good place to start.
<br><br>Also to clarify something else. None of the machines has to be infected by anything. I'm not saying they're not, but if any of the addresses are out on the web someplace (or was submitted when signing up for an account of some sorts), someone else has access to that information.
<br><br>If you want proof from something other than this list, do a search for "common spammer tricks". Here's the first one that came back for me. <<a href="http://antispam.yahoo.com/tips">http://antispam.yahoo.com/tips
</a>>. The relevant sections to you is "E-mail spoofing" and "Mining message boards and chat rooms."<br><br>It really blows my mind that the cable company doesn't have a clue about any of this. Are they new to the area? Have they recently gotten into the internet business? Have you talked with more than one person at the company (maybe the guy who is doing this is a new hire)? Have you asked them which IP the e-mail says it is coming from?
<br><br>-mike