hotmail and spam

[zulander]

right bit of an embarrassing one this one.

I have some family who live in France. I got an email from my brother the other day and couldn't read the subject line... so not suspecting anything odd i just opened it. Big mistake! Anyway as soon as I did it i was being directed to here and there and it was obviously spam. Since then I have apparently been sending emails to people several times a day with links in to viagra etc. Is there anyway i can stop this happening?

I have scanned my local machine with Microsoft security essentials and then tried running Kaspersky over it and the machine itself is clean. Is there anything else I can do cause its bloody annoying.


Cheers

[g8ina]

run spybot.

[digit]

The above and changing your password, though to be honest I'd just distance yourself from that account and setup another one!

[snootyjim]

I would consider running http://www.malwarebytes.org/products/malwarebytes_free just to be sure, and once you're certain try changing passwords, security questions and everything like that to something new. If you're still suffering after that then I'd seriously consider abandoning the account.

[scaryjim]

Chances are if its only sending email from your hotmail account that it's either hijacked your session cookies or grabbed your password from somewhere. Clear your browser cookies and change your hotmail password. If it keeps happening after that then you've got something to clean off your PC, but my guess would be one of the above would be more likely...

[zulander]

Chances are if its only sending email from your hotmail account that it's either hijacked your session cookies or grabbed your password from somewhere. Clear your browser cookies and change your hotmail password. If it keeps happening after that then you've got something to clean off your PC, but my guess would be one of the above would be more likely...

Cheers all I dont seem to have anything on my machines so ill see how i get on now

[nightcypher]

Quite often what happens is that people have the same passwords for a lot of things, and so when someone steals a forum database or something and cracks all the passwords they try the passwords against any webmail services associated with that forum account (in this case, if you'd signed up with a hotmail address they'd try logging in with the password they just gathered from the forum). I don't know if that was what happened here, but it's something to be aware of.

MalwareBytes and Spybot between them will catch most things, if you have something they don't catch it's probably not a trivial piece of password theft malware.

[cookie365]

Are you sure the spam is being sent from your hotmail account? Are they showing in your outbox when you look at your account through the web interface?

I'd have thought it more likely that the messages are coming from some other source and are faking the 'from' email address. Probably same for your brother too.

Not much you can do about it once it's happened. You can minimise the chances of it happening again by setting your email app to not download active content like images.

[pwnerman]

Just change all your security settings as a starter then run for spybots and spywares

And I guess you definitely will be more careful next time (with this unpleasant experience in mind!)

[abaxas]

Ok, if you click (or open an image) on an email. The spammer can know if that email actually exists.

Fake email is as old as the internet itself especially if that email address is in someone's address book, hence it will tend not to be filtered as spam.

Would you like some email from harriet_the_hamster@hexus.net ?

Easily done.

[MrBozack]

Would you like some email from harriet_the_hamster@hexus.net ?

Is she single?

[SteadfastJohn]

If you are lucky (relatively speaking of course) only your email address book will have been harvested to be added to spam distribution lists as fake senders. Spybot and Malwarebytes as mentioned by others should detect most other payloads left on your system. I have had to clean up several of my relatives and friends systems who have had similar experiences and so far no major rebuilds required.

Good luck, fingers crossed!

[spoon_]

Ok, if you click (or open an image) on an email. The spammer can know if that email actually exists.

Fake email is as old as the internet itself especially if that email address is in someone's address book, hence it will tend not to be filtered as spam.

Would you like some email from harriet_the_hamster@hexus.net ?

Easily done.

Assuming hexus.net is a mail enabled domain (which it probably is) you can relay anything off any user using smtp. But you probably know this already judging by your post, at least one that understands what's happening here

[pp05]

Backup your contacts to your desktop and then delete them from the hotmail account for a few weeks. It cannot send emails without email addresses.

Then run Malwarebytes or create a new user account on your pc.

[ClipOffers]

+1 on malware bytes

[atlewis]

Yeah, change pass, remove all viruses.