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Address Book Hijacked And Spam Sent

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D@z©

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Posted May 16, 2012 at 6:58AM

My Hotmail email address seems to have been hijacked and emails are being sent to everyone in there with links to sites along the lines of 'Earn $4000 in a day from home' etc. How can I stop this as a lot of people are getting quite annoyed with it, especially if they open it by mistake and it infects there computer.

I started with deleting all address' in my address book but it is still happening. Any ideas please? Thanks.

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KRONOS the First

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Posted May 16, 2012 at 7:22AM

I would have thought the most important and first thing to do is change your email account password as the spammers obviously still have access.

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D@z©

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Posted May 16, 2012 at 7:26AM

I have done that, but surley there must be more to it than that?

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stlucia2

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Posted May 16, 2012 at 7:42AM

It happened to me a couple of months back but, so far as I know, there was only one mass-mailing from my account.

I changed my password, and did full scans with several anti-virus programs -- Avast, Sophos Anti-Rootkit, Spybot S&D, Malwarebytes Anti-Malware, and SuperAntiSpyware. I can't remember what they identified, but the problem hasn't recurred.

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stlucia2

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Posted May 16, 2012 at 7:45AM

... I've just remembered, the first clue I got was when I received an "email undeliverable" message when I hadn't sent any emails. Obviously one or more of my address book entries was out of date, but it might be worth putting in a dummy entry so that you'll get an "undeliverable" message if your address book is taken over again.

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KRONOS the First

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Posted May 16, 2012 at 7:48AM

I have done that, but surley there must be more to it

I don't think so, it is all about access,if they do not have access then they cannot send spam mail in your name,or rather your email address. It certainly happened to me sometime back and a change of password sorted it. Now it might be that your address book has been harvested and your contacts will still receive spam but it won't be from your address.

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D@z©

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Posted May 16, 2012 at 7:50AM

Thanks stlucia2. Since I had the first couple I have formatted my PC and deleted all address' from my book. I am running Microsoft Security Essentials and never have viruses or malware or anything like that before, yet another was sent yesterday. I know they are being sent because my works email was in my address book and I am getting them there, god only knows what will happen if it ends up infecting the whole company!!

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buteman

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Posted May 16, 2012 at 9:09AM

Not sure if MSE checks your e-mails if not find one that does.

Do you only have MSE and no other Security programs.

If so maybe now would be a good time to run a few others.

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D@z©

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Posted May 16, 2012 at 10:01AM

So even if I was to delete the account and open a new one they could still receive emails?

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Woolwell

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Posted May 16, 2012 at 10:48AM

They may not be coming from your account but appear to be with the spammers have spoofed the address. What does seem to have happened is that they hacked into your hotmail account and have harvested the address book. I note you have changed the password which is the first step. Regrettably you are not alone in having your hotmail account hacked. This happened to my son and I would not use hotmail for this reason. Google mail does not appear to suffer from the same sort of hacking.

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lotvic

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Posted May 16, 2012 at 10:48AM

Was your hotmail address book only on your pc? or is it also on the hotmail Webmail server? Is your email pop3 or IMAP?

Which email client do you use on your pc?

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