Virus or hackers getting into your contact lists and sending e mails?
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Can someone help me out here please.
In the last 2 weeks i have had a virus or hacker get into my hotmail contact list and send e mails to all-with nothing in subject box and contains a link for various things?
Yet nothing appears in my sent folder?The only way i knew e mails had been sent was by getting loads of undelivered reports?Then this morning,after deleting most of my contacts over the weekend,the few contacts left in my folder were sent e mails,including myself, yet this time it had their/my name or just a 'Hi' in the subject box?weird goings on!
Can someone tell me how I can get this sorted and what I have to do?
This is the 3rd time in 2 weeks that this has happened and seems a bit strange all of a sudden?
Is it that I have a virus or has someone hacked into my pc and contact list?Finally whats even weirder is that only yesterday I mentioned this to someone and told them unless it had something in the subject box don't open it as it won't be from me etc and that nothing appears in my sent folder.
Until this morning when the few left was in my sent folder and as i said before their/my name or a 'Hi' was in the subject box?
Just seems strange that for the first time,since i had mentioned it to someone,things have suddenly changed etc?Any help will be appreciated and thanks in advance and take care ::)
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It's most likely a worm that got on your computer either from going to a dodgey website or opening an infected email.
If you have a strong anti virus, that should have caught it. All of the main anti virus companies do on-line scanning, just google " free antivirus scan online ".
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Depending on your email provider, it is also possible that whatever malicious software that may have created this problem may have logged your email account password. For this reason, I strongly recommend that you change your password for your email after having scanned your computer very thoroughly with a well known virus scanner as well as a spyware/malware remover.
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8)Thanks for the help and have scanned with Avast and Malwarebytes Anti-Malware and changed password for e mail too.
Hope this is it,as it's very maddening to say the least.Haven't been to any new websites lately so presume it's come from an infected e mail
Once again a big thank you for your help and sound advice :hug:
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The scary thing is that depending on how your computer is configured, it can also occur as a result of something that happens from an external source (such as a hacker). This isn't "common" per say, but its not unheard of. Other ways that it can occur is depending on your internet connection, if you use an internet connection that requires a login authentication system (such as PPP or PPPoE), if your ISP has been affected in the right way with a virus, the update script that gets run after the hardware handshake and the credentials have been verified can actually give you a virus. That type of case however is rare, and I've only ever personally witnessed it once by an ISP that soon thereafter went belly up.
In either case listed above, the most common thing that it will produce is what I like to call a pornato. A pornato is defined as the sudden continuous pop up of windows of porn sites. These sites typically range anywhere from fake porn listings with pictures to fool you (sometimes banner ads) to sites like "My Jizz Diaries". The only reason I know that site and know that it is a source for getting a pornato was when my 8 year old cousin accidentally opened the wrong email, had it pop up, and asked me "What is this?"….. Talk about ACKWARD! :lolp:
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I had a very similar thing happen on my Yahoo mail account a couple of months ago, as did someone else I know on their hotmail. I only realised mail had been sent out by the undelivered messages bouncing back from defunct addresses on my list. I'm ultra cautious when it comes to anti-virus/malware so I was puzzled how it could happen. All I could think of was shortly before, I had clicked on one of those irritating 'chat requests' which are obviously spam to delete it, but I didn't quite hit the X, and it opened. I remember spending ages going through all the settings to try and stop these spam chats for good, but yahoo in their wisdom don't make it easy.
The first thing I did was change my password. I did the usual anti-virus scans but nothing showed up. That was the only occurence, fortunately. Presumably the scum behind these viruses are able to easily adapt them for yahoo, hotmail and gmail.
