Help. Seemed To Have Had My Email Hijacked

[Darrell O'Neill]

Quick question guys,

I seemed to have had my email hi-jacked.

Im with aol and Ive just had loads of people mail me to tell me an email has been sent to them from me.

Ive changed my aol password, is there anything else I need to do?

[KugaWestie]

You have a virus on your pc

[peterg]

something has got in and sXXXed your email address sending spam emails to the contents of your address book...

Do a scan with a decent ant-virus package (Microsoft Security Essentials, Avast, AVG or similar) and you'll probably need to scan for malware as well so download and run this http://download.cnet...4-10804572.html

hahaha the rude word check has censored sp o o f ed

[Darrell O'Neill]

Thanks.. the laptop is only 3days old

[peterg]

That's possibly the most vulnerable time, as you're loading the software you need to protect it such as AV you are accessing the internet with NO protection.....

I use MS Security Essentials and the Windows firewall and don't have any problems and they're both free and well supported

[Dave Eastwood (Gadgetman) - Club Chairman]

However, it's also a timely reminder to send to your friends and associates who already have your email address.

The nasty little bit of software out there can be devilishly clever and NOT impersonate the owner of the email account, (too easy to ID the source), I stead they pick an address randomly from the users address book and impersonate them.

So it is possible, that while appearing to be from you they're coming from someone who knows you.

[ACW]

What Gadgetman said. You need to have a look in the headers of the emails that appear to be coming from you, but I bet its someone who has you in thier address book and the virus / trojan / malware is then impersonating you. Scan your machines to double check however.

[Mark Stanton]

www.malwarebytes.org is another good freebie antimalware software option

[peterg]

That's the one I already linked to Mr Stanton sir

[DerekJ]

Hi,

It could also be someone else has the virus NOT you.

A lot of these things look at the infected computer contacts list and send out spam mails pretending that they come from one of the contacts. This get's the mail through some of the simpler spam filters and hides the real sender's address.

DerekJ

[Stuart]

I have been using the free Comodo combination anti-virus and firewall (along with Malwarebytes) for quite a while now. Had no problems, the software isn't a resource hogger or port blocker and the new 'SmartScan' upgrade is probably the fastest scan I've ever seen. I use Spywareblaster as well. Belt and braces where viruses and malware are concerned as they can be very time consuming to sort out.

[stephenh]

The impression I get from friends who have had a similar problem is that some email providers are more prone to this than others. Any logic in that?