parsonswife
Veteran Member
Someone has hacked my hotmail email contact list and is sending spam out in my name. Is there anyway to stop this or do I just need a new email account?
Thanks
Thanks
TECH My email has been hacked--what to do?
- Thread starter parsonswife
- Start date
TECH32
Inactive
You sure? Anyone can make an email look like it came from any address in the "from" part of the email...
parsonswife
Veteran Member
Not sure if it was hacked or "borrowed". It is really irritating my friends and my work contacts!
If you have used that account to send mail then that someone has it in their system and it can be hacked and retrieved along with many other addresses, this has happened many times. As of late there has been some e-mails sent with virus and I have gotten a few of them and these same people thats doing this has hacked my ISP's e-mail system & servers.
China Connection
TB Fanatic
You can change your sign in details but not you email name unless you start up with a new email account.
Whatever the person sends should be traceable and some legal process should be available.
..........
Whatever the person sends should be traceable and some legal process should be available.
..........
Technomancer
Inactive
Has someone been logging into your account by stolen or guessed password, or does it just seem that your contact list has been copied for spam emails? And do the emails go out to your entire contact list, or just a particular section of them?
If you have no infections on your own computer, it's easily possible that an email you sent out to everyone with your contacts listed (CC) rather than apearing only to each recipient (BCC) was received by someone else who was infected where it was harvested.
My first suspicions (most likely because it is autonomous without having to "call home" to another computer) would be that either your computer or another that you logged onto is sending out the emails.
If you stay logged into an email or IM account in your browser, there are many ways for a website to harvest the contacts or have your computer send out a mass IM or email to everyone.
Another scenerio that is floating around right now:
1.You get an email that says " Joe (someone from your contacts or facebook) has written a message to/about you or his friends at www.____.com. Please click here or go to www.______.com to see what Joe has said" Whether you click or go to the site in a new window makes no difference.
2. At www._______.com, it says to sign into your yahoo/facebook/myspace/etc to see what people are saying about you or your friends are posting. You sign in there and it uses your password to log into your account and send out a message to everyone else to get them to go and give their account details to that same website.
My advice: check your computer and any other computer you use to sign into whatever accounts for malware/spyware/virus. Try changing all your passwords after that to see if it stops.
If your list was already harvested and the emails are coming from somewhere else out in cyberspace, then there's not really much to do other than get a new email and be more careful with it this time. I'd suggest telling people personally about your new address rather than sending out an email addressed to everyone together.
Spoofed emails are almost impossible to trace if done with any skill whatsoever. They don't show who or where they actually came from, they might even show themselves as coming from your ISP or hotmail/yahoo/gmail itself. All it has to do is send the email to a server and claim "I got this email from this other server, and I'm just passing the message along" and it looks legit.
If you have no infections on your own computer, it's easily possible that an email you sent out to everyone with your contacts listed (CC) rather than apearing only to each recipient (BCC) was received by someone else who was infected where it was harvested.
My first suspicions (most likely because it is autonomous without having to "call home" to another computer) would be that either your computer or another that you logged onto is sending out the emails.
If you stay logged into an email or IM account in your browser, there are many ways for a website to harvest the contacts or have your computer send out a mass IM or email to everyone.
Another scenerio that is floating around right now:
1.You get an email that says " Joe (someone from your contacts or facebook) has written a message to/about you or his friends at www.____.com. Please click here or go to www.______.com to see what Joe has said" Whether you click or go to the site in a new window makes no difference.
2. At www._______.com, it says to sign into your yahoo/facebook/myspace/etc to see what people are saying about you or your friends are posting. You sign in there and it uses your password to log into your account and send out a message to everyone else to get them to go and give their account details to that same website.
My advice: check your computer and any other computer you use to sign into whatever accounts for malware/spyware/virus. Try changing all your passwords after that to see if it stops.
If your list was already harvested and the emails are coming from somewhere else out in cyberspace, then there's not really much to do other than get a new email and be more careful with it this time. I'd suggest telling people personally about your new address rather than sending out an email addressed to everyone together.
Spoofed emails are almost impossible to trace if done with any skill whatsoever. They don't show who or where they actually came from, they might even show themselves as coming from your ISP or hotmail/yahoo/gmail itself. All it has to do is send the email to a server and claim "I got this email from this other server, and I'm just passing the message along" and it looks legit.
Running Dog
Inactive
Your email should NOT be your name.
Change it.
Change it.
BassMan
Veteran Member
I'm no security geek, but I always assumed people just "mined" email addresses on the 'net, and just modified their own email software to use other peoples' email addresses. Not their actual email system; just their email address.
When SMTP (the email standard) sends an email, it include the source email. That can be faked, with absolutely no access to your email account.
Another way to get email addresses is by infecting a machine where somebody has a distribution-list, and getting their distribution-list. The infected machine then becomes a "zombie", sending spam emails to everyone on the distribution-list.
Bottom-line: They probably just have your email address (e.g. Moe@3Stooges.com). I've had something similar happen to me, where a couple of strangers explain via email, in no uncertain terms, that they DO NOT want Viagra...
When SMTP (the email standard) sends an email, it include the source email. That can be faked, with absolutely no access to your email account.
Another way to get email addresses is by infecting a machine where somebody has a distribution-list, and getting their distribution-list. The infected machine then becomes a "zombie", sending spam emails to everyone on the distribution-list.
Bottom-line: They probably just have your email address (e.g. Moe@3Stooges.com). I've had something similar happen to me, where a couple of strangers explain via email, in no uncertain terms, that they DO NOT want Viagra...
night driver
ESFP adrift in INTJ sea
Yeah. They grabbed Tari's hotmail address list and have been sending e-mails out for about 2 months now. NO they don't have her password (it's not obvious) and yes they are sending their mil out to the whole list (there are some bad ones in there and every few hours we get a list of undeliverables......the spoof fools all of the servers....)
parsonswife
Veteran Member
The spoof has all of my old hotmail contacts that I managed with Outlook, alot that are no longer valid. I changed to Mozilla Thunderbird to manage my emails last year which only has a handful of contacts. I never CC or BCC and I dont send social/goofy type emails. Email is primarily for work.
A friend told me that a lot of the "work from home and make $3000 a month" schemes are people mining emails to send spam to.
Very irritating!!
A friend told me that a lot of the "work from home and make $3000 a month" schemes are people mining emails to send spam to.
Very irritating!!
xtreme_right
Veteran Member
I had the same thing happen to me. I finally cut and pasted my entire contact list and mailed it to myself and then deleted my contact list. I think it worked. I checked my "sent folder" and saw that these emails were going out daily. None have gone out since I removed my contact list.
Besides the spam emails being sent, Hotmail has had problems connecting to the server more than half the time I go to the site in the last few weeks. I think it's time to switch to yahoo.
xr
Besides the spam emails being sent, Hotmail has had problems connecting to the server more than half the time I go to the site in the last few weeks. I think it's time to switch to yahoo.
xr
Ambros
Veteran Member
sounds like its something on your machine then... make sure you are running an up-to-date antivirus such as avast or even avg free... i run both of those and like them quite a bit... some viruses will actually corrupt/internally disable your AV software so make sure it is actually running correctly... if it turns out not to be a virus then check for malware, use a program such as spybot search and destroy or malware bytes and see if anything pops up...
my money is on a virus and if it did in fact corrupt your current AV you may need to re-install and re-scan your machine
my money is on a virus and if it did in fact corrupt your current AV you may need to re-install and re-scan your machine
That screams that the computer your on is infected with a virus and it has raided your old Outlook address book. Update your virus protection and run it. Also run malware bytes on the machine and you can also download and run this http://vil.nai.com/vil/stinger to look for virii as well on your machine.
You should run all of these while booted up in SAFE MODE as you have a better chance of catching it.
night driver
ESFP adrift in INTJ sea
In some cases it could well be an infestation, but RELIC's spam mails continued even while her computer was absolutely offline with a wet HD. So we KNOW it isn't something on her comp. OR mine....
Same thing happened to me within last 2 wks...my techy nephew called & asked if I just sent email..no I hadn't...he told me to change my password, it was too weak...my whole mail list got sent something from google multiple times...my brother had opened it, not receiving my message to NOT OPEN I didnot send....it was some Viagra ad..it happened multiple times...changed my password & it stopped happening...don't know much more than that but heard this had happened to couple others I know...???
Same thing happened to me too.
I had to notify who I had the email account with and explain so they will delete that account.
How I found out was I went to open a facebook with that email and all the people that popped up I didn't know, so I googled them and they were porn people. Uggh! So I have written facebook also.
I had to notify who I had the email account with and explain so they will delete that account.
How I found out was I went to open a facebook with that email and all the people that popped up I didn't know, so I googled them and they were porn people. Uggh! So I have written facebook also.