Morning all :)My email has been hacked and is spouting out spam mail to all and sundry!!!...What can i do to remedy the problem? Or is it a case of binning the email address?!! :(

Cheers

Kit

For starters, change your password from a computer which you believe to be clean from viruses (I assume you have good virus protection on all your computers, but if not then install Microsoft Security Essentials which is free and very good).

Also, are you SURE that your account has actually been compromised, and it's not just someone sending mail which APPEARS to come from you, but actually is from a third party? It's very easy to do, sadly...

Also, are you SURE that your account has actually been compromised, and it's not just someone sending mail which APPEARS to come from you, but actually is from a third party? It's very easy to do, sadly...

+1

It's called spoofing and there really isn't anything you can do about it if that is the case.

Previous advice was sound, change your passwords and scan your machine.

What sort of email address is it coming from (whats's after the @)?

Do you use webmail (Hotmail, GMail) or something like Outlook?

I didnt realise there was a problem until most of my friends started txting and ringing me saying theyve had spam from my email address! Ive been using the same mail.com address for about ten years and this is the first problem ive had. How do i find out if the mail has actually come from me?

Cheers

Kit

I didnt realise there was a problem until most of my friends started txting and ringing me saying theyve had spam from my email address! Ive been using the same mail.com address for about ten years and this is the first problem ive had. How do i find out if the mail has actually come from me?

Cheers

Kit

If the emails seem to be going to people you have emailed in the past or are in your address book then your account has probably been hacked. If you get replies from random people you have never heard of then someone is probably spoofing your address.

All the replies are from folk i know in my address book!! My email now seems to realise that something is going on as it tried to send out another batch but they were all blocked from being sent.

Suppose ive been lucky that this is the fisrt time its been hacked in ten years!!

K:)

Hello Kit,

As above really - What virus protection do you have (if any) on your computer? When was the last time you did a 'Full Scan'?

I suggest you start by changing your password initially, please use a mixture of letters, numbers and upper/lowercase with a symbol or two thrown in. This should indeed make it more secure.

Kit

If your using an online email IE hotmail etc , then as stated earlier change your password but also change your details such as personal question etc and check your birthdate and country , i have seen this done on a customers computer where the hacker kept changing the details so he could get or change the new password .

I have MS sercurity essentials on it and it does a full scan every week. Ive changed the password already but maybe i should start changing it every week or so?!!

Kit

Are these people also in the others address books?

Could be them who's compromised and not you. Best way to tell is copy the full email headers into a decoder or Spamcop.net. That'll confirm a hack or if its just spoofing being from you.

Are these people also in the others address books?

Could be them who's compromised and not you. Best way to tell is copy the full email headers into a decoder or Spamcop.net. That'll confirm a hack or if its just spoofing being from you.

+1 some viruses will scan address books and stored emails for addresses, spoof one at random as a 'from' then spew out the mails. If you've got AV and it's up to date it's probably not you with the problem.

Guy had work had this yesterday - some people in his address book received a random spam email, with a link in it.

Must have embedded itself into the email programme and then just spouted out to random addresses.

I suggest you start by changing your password initially, please use a mixture of letters, numbers and upper/lowercase with a symbol or two thrown in. This should indeed make it more secure.

Always makes me think of this when I hear stuff like that

If the emails were blocked, who blocked them? The email program has no way of blocking, and obviously your anti virus programs havent noticed anything wrong before now.

I suspect your PC has sent out so much it has had your IP listed on one or more of the Spam block lists; this happened to me a few years ago after an infection. You will need to talk to your ISP and the blocking organisation to get your IP address removed, BUT, you need to clean your PC first, or otherwise you will get put straight back on the list as soon as the next batch of spam gets sent out.

It is NO GOOD running a scan with your current AV program (assuming you have one), if it hasnt given you a warning then it is being over-ridden by whatever infection you have.

Download and install Malwarebytes, run the virus definition update, then reboot into "Safe Mode" (usually F8 when booting the PC), and run a full scan; then reboot into safe mode and run it again, as deleting some viruses can make OTHER viruses become visible.

Many virus programs block access to AV program websites, so you may need to download it on a different computer.

Most of Malwarebytes tools are free, so you do not need to buy it to use it.

Update and run it daily for at least a week to be sure it has removed everything; if it keeps finding problems, you have a problem

Some infections need stronger tools to remove them, but some of these need help, as they can cause damage to system files., you will need to visit somewhere like bleepingcomputers and ask for help.