re:I received three e-mail from friends telling me they had received e-mail from me with photos attached. I have not sent these.

Sounds like a nefarious person is abusing your email address to send emails. It does not necessarilly mean they have accessed your account. But the server thinks it is you because it is your email address.

re :Now my e-mail account is blocked from sending messages as it say my e-mail may contain spam or phishing messages.

Not very funny. Sadly, this is nothing that can be fixed from a Thunderbird point of view. You could try to see if your email address has been picked up by a spam filter and as server uses spam filters, it gets blocked.

Try spamhaus as they have several filters to check and if it is located then they have instructions on ow to remove of list. https://check.spamhaus.org/

If the email account is offered by your ISP, then get in contact with them explaining someone is abusing your email address, it is not you who is sending the emails. If your friend still has a copy of the email, they could look at the view source and save it as a simple text document and then send as attachment to you. This would contain all the various headers and may help to prove your case that you did not send it.

In Thunderbird you would see the View Source by any of these methods. Select email in list. Menu app icon > 'View' > 'Click on 'Message Source' Select email in list - Press and hold 'Ctrl' key and press 'U' key. Open email so it is viewable in Message Pane, click on 'More' and select 'View Source.

Then you can select all the text, copy and paste into 'Notepad' and save as a text file.

What can you do: Fortunately, those email address abusers do get bored after a while and move on to prey on someone else. But it does not solve the immediate problem.

Email addresses are often located because people type them into public forums or people receive amusing emails which they forward on to other friends, but they do not remove the headers before hand.

The origin of 'amusing' email could be from a spammer and they are relying on people spreading it around so they can gather a load of information, it is entirely possible remote content was allowed. Image files can be the size of pixel and you would not see it.

Advice:

• Do not openly post email address in any internet forum.
• Do not forward any 'amusing emails' and ask friends to do the same.
• Do not automatically allow 'remote content' to display, by default Thunderbird has this switched off. I know it can be less attractive to receive emails with blank outlines where images should be, but it is safer.
• Before allowing images attached to email to show inline, please be very confident of their source. So by default do not select 'View' > 'Display Attachments Inline'
• Do not be tempted to open any attachments unless you know who sent it. Remember con artists are hoping you will be curious enough to open the attachment and they rely on it.

Check you do not have any virus on computer which may be collecting keystrokes. Always start computer in 'Safe Mode' first and then run scans.

Once all is ok, restart computer in normal mode and then access your webmail account via browser. Check to see if anything is lurking in the server 'Sent' folder - just in case server auto saved a copy of those 'bad' emails. If bad email exists, then perhaps you can look at the source and copy into a Notepad to create a text file. If you have a POP mail account, you would not have been aware of the server 'Sent' folder contents. If IMAP then you should be able to see it in Thunderbird - you just might not have realised it was there. Whilst logged on to the account - Suggest you update your password - as a minimum use at least 10 lower and uppercase letters and numerals.

Then you would need to update the stored password in Thunderbird. Menu app icon > Preferences > Privacy & security Under 'Passwords' click on 'Saved Passwords' Click on 'Show Passwords' There may be two different lines - mailbox and smtp - right click and choose 'Edit Password' Rmove all content and carefully type in new password - do this for both incoming and outgoing lines. Then click on 'Close' and restart Thunderbird.