Help ! My Hotmail is Spamming the World !

[Old Timer]

Hello Chaps,

Some help please !

I have a hotmail address that I use for sites/Companies that insist on having an email address.

Today the account has gone mad and is sending out spam to all and sundry, and I keep getting rejection messages in return.

There are no viruses or other nasties on the computer as I have a lot of protection here, and all my various scans report all clean.

How on earth can I stop this hotmail nasty ?

 

[ralphchadkirk]

Hey,

I suggest you have a look here: http://windowslivehelp.com/solution.../04/29/recent-reports-of-account-hijacks.aspx

Scan your PC immediately for Malware using a trustworthy scanner, and then change your password to a "strong" one.

 

[MCR247]

Hello Chaps,

Some help please !

I have a hotmail address that I use for sites/Companies that insist on having an email address.

Today the account has gone mad and is sending out spam to all and sundry, and I keep getting rejection messages in return.

There are no viruses or other nasties on the computer as I have a lot of protection here, and all my various scans report all clean.

How on earth can I stop this hotmail nasty ?

I know there was a virus where someone would send something like this to all of the contacts on MSN & bebo: 'Is this you in that picture?' 'Lol I just found this really cool picture of you' with a download/link. When people clicked it, they would get it, and you'd send it out without you knowing

 

[generalvegitable]

change your password, NOW, never give out your password to anyone, and do not log into your hotmail or any other site through a 3rd party because they are guaranteed to be phishing sites.

 

[Old Timer]

OK chaps, thank you.

The virus check I did earlier and it was fine, there is a firewall here, and I have a variety of malaware scanners that I run.

None of them has repoorted anything wrong. I even ran the MS malicious software removal tool and that came out clean.

Anyway password has been changed, so lets see what happens now.

 

[Mojo]

It may not be your account that is sending them; for example my Email client and SMTP server allows me to send any Email as if it was from any other Email address. I have this particular problem with another domain name I own and it got so bad at one point I had to block any rejection Emails.

 

[jopsuk]

There's also clever spam-virus stuff that arrives looking as if it is a rejected message from you. Doesn't always have the payload on it- funnily enough nasty programs can go haywire too.

 

[Wyvern]

It may be someone else that you've written to that has your address in their address book and they have got the virus.

The spammer then adds your address as "reply to" for all the rubbish he is sending out and many of the address he sends to will be defunct so but you get the rejections instead.

This has happened to me a couple of times. I now use Google Mail with two addresses. The general one I use for shopping etc I never connect to using my computer's e-mail client (Thunderbird) but read using the Google website.

The other is kept private and goes through my web site host, redirected to a Google mail account, then picked up by Thunderbird. THus there are three levels of flitering.

I only very rarely get junk mail penetrating as far as my computer (some malicious programmes can start without you dong anything) such as those attached to an e-mail or Microsoft Word header.

 

[Tom B]

I know there was a virus where someone would send something like this to all of the contacts on MSN & bebo: 'Is this you in that picture?' 'Lol I just found this really cool picture of you' with a download/link. When people clicked it, they would get it, and you'd send it out without you knowing

Which is how viruses breed, mostly - foolishness.

 

[LMS6202]

I have had a similar problem a while ago.. Got round it by deleting the email account and setting up another. Password should be at least 16 characters long and a combination of upper/lower case and numbers.

 

[Geezertronic]

Unfortunately it is so easy to fake email addresses. I have a VBScript which I use for SMTP testing and you can configure the From address to anything you like, which I guess is similar to what spammers do.

 

[Old Timer]

Just to confirm I keep the Hotmail completely separated from my computer account, don't download anything from it and scan any attachments that I am happy with.

I never open up any unknown link.

Only very trusted people get onto my Outlook address.

 

[jopsuk]

In which case it's very unlikely that this was actually a hotmail virus, or that your account actually has been compromised.

Sadly, it does mean there's even less that can be done