Email account being used to send SPAM

[nofishfisherman]

My hotmail account was used to send out a SPAM email to all the people in my contacts list. It happened Tuesday and Wednesday this week.

Anyone ever have this happen to them? How did you handle it? Any experts know how to stop it from happening?

I ran Norton virus scan and my computer came back clean. I have all updates I can find, I've changed the password and security question on my account. Anything else I can do?

I did some google research and found this is an incredibly common problem but no real solution. Not sure how it happened to me or how else to protect myself in the future.

[Jakesbuds]

First change your password.

If at all possible, I would get a new email address from hotmail and shoot one out telling your friends you have a new email. As you stated there is no real way to remedy something like this other than these 2 options

[Ralph Wiggum]

Yup, happened to several friends, including myself.

I changed all my passwords ASAP, and that seems to have cleared it up.

[upnorth]

Obviously your address book got hacked. And there are some things that can be done to make it look the email came from you.

[jwhjr]

Happened to some friends and my wife recently, changing the password seems to have done the trick to stop it. We did a virus scan as well and everything came up clean.

[spearchucker]

This seems to be happening a lot lately with Yahoo, GMail, and other emails. I had the same happen a month ago.

[sparkyaber]

Same thing happened to me about 2 years ago, changed my password, and it went away, good to go since.

[nofishfisherman]

I changed my password and security question and so far nothing else has gone out. Sounds like that should be enough.

I was getting tired of having friends email me warning me about a virus coming from my computer.

[BobT]

I changed my password and security question and so far nothing else has gone out. Sounds like that should be enough.

I was getting tired of having friends email me warning me about a virus coming from my computer.

In a situation like this would it work to close the email account and then reopen it again? I don't know too much abou this but for some reason I suspect that each email account might have its own IP address? Maybe by closing it and then reopening the account, the service provider (google, yahoo, msn, etc.) will assign a fresh IP. You could guarantee that by opening a new one first, transferring your contact list, and then closing the old one.

Maybe I'm way off target here.

[spearchucker]

Originally Posted By: nofishfisherman

I changed my password and security question and so far nothing else has gone out. Sounds like that should be enough.

I was getting tired of having friends email me warning me about a virus coming from my computer.

In a situation like this would it work to close the email account and then reopen it again? I don't know too much abou this but for some reason I suspect that each email account might have its own IP address? Maybe by closing it and then reopening the account, the service provider (google, yahoo, msn, etc.) will assign a fresh IP. You could guarantee that by opening a new one first, transferring your contact list, and then closing the old one.

Maybe I'm way off target here.

It doesn't work that way. You are always connecting to the same IP address whether it is Google, Yahoo, or whatever.

[BobT]

As I suspected. I'm in left field or maybe in the parking lot. Thought I'd learn something. Now I get to go home! Thanks, spearchucker!

[MuleShack]

This happened to me about a month ago. I changed passwords and didn't see an issue again.

I believe that they are hacking the hotmail site directly and not the individual PC.

The reason I say this is because the only place that the hacked address book existed was on line. I have had this hotmail account (mainly for sign ups) for 16 years and most of the addresses that were spammed to were very old and some came back as undeliverable. The only place those existed was on the hotmail server. Most of the addresses are of people I no longer have contact with or were co workers that no longer work together. So what I'm saying is that microsofts site is the one that has the leak and i'm about 99.9% sure of that.

[nofishfisherman]

Thats what I was thinking. After I did some research it seems hotmail is not very secure and has been hacked before.

I'm likely going to change my account over to something more secure.

[spearchucker]

Thats what I was thinking. After I did some research it seems hotmail is not very secure and has been hacked before.

I'm likely going to change my account over to something more secure.

Like what?

[nofishfisherman]

I've heard just about any of the free email providers are more secure than hotmail. Of course none of them are perfect but as I've done some research online it seems hotmail has been hacked into several times but hasn't been very willing to admit it.

Gmail seems to be the one getting the best reviews from users.

[BobT]

It may not necessarily be security issues. Like Microsoft is attacked more than Mac. Simply put, the more popular sites or systems will be attacked more voraciously and my guess is as certain sites become used more and more, they too will fall victim.

[Surface Tension]

Put a dummy email address in your address book. That email address should be on the top of your address book, something that begins with AA . If your email address book gets hacked, the dummy address of coarse won't go threw and an error will occur. That error will stop the rest of the automated emails from going out.

Change your password once in a while.

[BobT]

When you say dummy address do you mean one that has no valid domain so it goes nowhere?

[LMITOUT]

Yep.

Good idea!

[SkunkedAgain]

Good idea but does it actually work? My wife's Yahoo address just got hacked. Her address book was filled with all kinds of old email addresses that no longer work, but everybody else still got the spam email from her account. How is a dummy address any different?