Expert: Lorry - 6/13/2008

Question
Hello,

My Hotmail email account address book has been HIJACKED!  That is, spam emails from MY email address are being sent to ALL people in my contact list.

I contacted my NORTON ANTIVIRUS people and they ran their checks and insist my PC is virus free.  I also contacted Webroot Spysweeper and did their tests and they say the same thing...all is OK on their end.

I contacted my ISP...and they didn't know what to do.

I am contemplating closing my current HOTMAIL account and opening another at HOTMAIL, GMAIL, or COMCAST. OR even creating a domain with a email address at GODADDY.COM.
Any suggestions?

Thanks!

Ron

Answer
Hi Ron,

The problem isn't with Norton, your ISP or SpySweeper, sounds like someone is "spoofing" your email address. Please see the following for more information:

http://www.g4tv.com/techtvvault/features/36116/SelfSending_Spam.html?article_key...

Check out the following also:

http://www.identitytheftfixes.com/can_someone_steal_your_email_to_send_spam.html

Subject: Re: is my computer sending out spam?
Answered By: theta-ga on 10 Aug 2005 05:48 PDT
Rated:5 out of 5 stars     

Hi gnossie-ga,
   Rest assured that neither your computer nor your hotmail account
have been hijacked. The virus laden email was sent from a computer
that had been infected by the Netsky worm. This worm scans the hard
disk of the infected computer looking for email addresses, and then
mails itself to these addresses using a spoofed 'From' field for these
emails. The From field is usually filled with one of the email
addresses it found on the disk.
   So, the most likely scenario is that the worm infected the system
of someone who had your hotmail address on disk. It then proceeded to
email itself to the addresses it found, using random addresses in the
'From:' field. As it happened,  the omega.agenda.net server received
the mail which had your hotmail address in the From field, and
automatically notified you.
   More information on this worm can be found here:
       - W32.Netsky.P@mm
         (http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.netsky.p@mm.html)
   In case you want to scan your system for this worm, you can use
the removal tool found here:
       - W32.Netsky@mm Removal Tool
         (http://securityresponse.symantec.com/avcenter/venc/data/w32.netsky@mm.removal.to...)

 I myself had a run in with this worm last year when I suddenly
started receiving around 4-5 virus notification emails from a local
business here. Since I had never mailed anyone in that company, I was
most puzzled. However, a little detective work uncovered that an
acquantaince of mine was working in that company, and had his system
infected by this worm. Now his system was sending these worm laden
emails to his collegues, with my mail id in the from field (!!), and
their updated antivirus filter was catching these mails and notifying
me. The notifications took around two weeks to subside. :)

=========================

Hope this helps.
If you need any clarifications, just ask!

Regards,
Theta-ga

From: http://answers.google.com/answers/threadview?id=553931

I would suggest changing your User Name and Password, use letters and numbers in both in no certain order - in other words, make it a little harder for someone to hack the account.

Have you thought about using Outlook Express? By doing that, the email would be on your computer and not out there somewhere in cyberspace, just a tad bit more security.

Hope this helps!
Lorry