Hotmail Sending Spam Emails Out To COntacts

Saaf_laandon_mo · 24-08-2009, 10:53

Yesterday my hotmail account was sending out spam emails to all my contact list.

Can anyone suggest what I should do now. I have changed my password just incase. I am not in a habit of opening unexpected attachements/emails to this addy so not sure how its become infected.

Thanks.

Dai · 24-08-2009, 11:24

Quote:

Originally Posted by Saaf_laandon_mo

Yesterday my hotmail account was sending out spam emails to all my contact list.

Can anyone suggest what I should do now. I have changed my password just incase. I am not in a habit of opening unexpected attachements/emails to this addy so not sure how its become infected.

Thanks.

I doubt that it's become "infected". It's far more likely that somebody did a Brutus job on your account, running a tool to try password combinations until they hit the right one.

I'd check your personal details on the account and make sure that any secondary email details or security question data has not been reset. Other than that all you can do is use as complex a password as you can tolerate.

Saaf_laandon_mo · 24-08-2009, 12:10

I've changed password and security question. I have also noticed that my contacts list is now empty. Additionally all my sent emails from 1st June 2009 to yesterday have been deleted.

Raistlin · 24-08-2009, 12:30

Is there a secondary email address linked to that account, possibly for password retrieval purposes?

If there is you need to change the details/password for that as well.

You also need to look at any online accounts for which that may be the user name, or for which you might have used the same password. Ideally those should all be changed to something complicated and different from each other.

Osem · 24-08-2009, 13:16

Sorry to hear this SLM. Hope the damage done isn't too serious.

This is a cautionary tale so is there any easy way of preventing/mitigating the effects of this sort of thing (other than by using complex passwords) and/or backing up existing e.mails stored on Hotmail to another location just in case?

punky · 24-08-2009, 14:17

What I do is if I have a machine suspected to have a virus: I put in a Linux live CD and then use that to change the password. Otherwise changing the password on an infected machine would just mean the miscreant gets your new password as well.

Once the miscreant is locked out, then you can go through the much slower process of making sure your machine is cleaned up.

Dai · 24-08-2009, 15:28

Hmm. I may have been a little hasty in dismissing a local infection.

http://windowslivehelp.com/solutions...t-hijacks.aspx

"Note that you will still be able to login, and are in fact, "sharing" your account with the spammer. Hotmail believes that this may be due to a virus on a computer that you have used to login to Hotmail at some point in the past."

Check the auto-reply in your OPTIONS page and also your signature. The spammer may have traces in both of these.

webcrawler2050 · 24-08-2009, 15:29

It's spoofing or a form of spoofing..

Simple answer, report it to hotmail

punky · 24-08-2009, 16:44

Quote:

Originally Posted by webcrawler2050

It's spoofing or a form of spoofing..

Simple answer, report it to hotmail

Its not spoofing as a load of his e-mails have been deleted.

Saaf_laandon_mo · 25-08-2009, 08:36

Quote:

Originally Posted by punky

Its not spoofing as a load of his e-mails have been deleted.

As has my contact list. Punky, in your opinion do you think it would be sufficient to change my hotmail password from a different machine? Just so I secure it. I am intending to rebuild the laptop thats been possibly infected this coming the weekend. Would it still be safe to use in the meantime?