Can someone use my IP address to send emails?

My cousin has been receiving texts from someone she believes to be my husband. The texts are being sent to her phone from a hotmail account. I was able to gain access to the hotmail account and viewed the log in history. The IP addresses associated with all the log ins dating back to July are from MY IP address. Is it possible for someone to gain access to and use my IP address from their own computer? My husband insists that he is being set up. My husband is fairly tech savvy so I did find it odd that I was able to figure out how to get into the Hotmail account so easily.

 

I don't know Hotmail, so I am unsure how it works, or how easy it would be to fake an originating IP address.

I use Gmail, and it works as follows:

• when I use an email client like Outlook, a message sent through my Gmail account will contain my IP as the originating IP address
• when I send a message from my Gmail account using a browser, then the originating email address is a Google mail server

In both instances I cannot see how it would be possible to fake the originating IP address.

Could someone possibly be using your computer to send these messages?

 

When you say you accessed the Hotmail account easily, do you mean it was easy to crack the password or you just typed Hotmail's address into the browser address bar and the account was already logged in, or what? If you only had to type in the address and the account was already logged in, that's definitely the computer being used.

Is there any possibility that someone nearby has hopped onto your wireless and is trying to cause trouble, a neighbour for example? Or that you have someone staying with you who may be trying to make trouble or who is messing around without any thought to the real consequences this could have in the relationship between you two?

We once had a house guest who was accessing pornography on our computers and didn't even have the sense to avoid virus-laden sites but it was quickly apparent who the culprit was by reading the browser's internet history and seeing when these sites were accessed. Unfortunately, unless no one in the house has Hotmail, it would be difficult to work out, in your case.

It's more likely that someone would have used dummy information when setting up the account (if they intended to use it for nefarious purposes) but it could be worth seeing if they used anything that might clue you in to who the culprit is.