hijacked email account

[kumamake]

hello,
i think my email account has been hijacked and emails are being sent to people from my contact list.
i use xxx@rogers.com, and check my email at rogers yahoo.
i have had people complaining to me that i am sending them junk mail, i had to remove contacts from my list. can someone please advise what i should do to avoid this in the future.

thanks

 

[Tangwhich]

Get a strong password with capitals, lower case, numbers and symbols.
I've had email like this from many people with yahoo and hotmail accounts. Stronger passwords put a stop to it.

 

[The Options Menu]

Get a strong password with capitals, lower case, numbers and symbols.
I've had email like this from many people with yahoo and hotmail accounts. Stronger passwords put a stop to it.

There's a good possibility that somebody hasn't brute forced your password, but instead your system has some malware that has hijacked it...

-Do you have a decent up to date firewall? (Comodo or Zone Alarm)
-Do you have a decent up to date virus scanner that your ran a scan with? (Avast or AVG)
-Do you have a malware remover? (Spybot Search & Destroy)
-Are you using IE? (Consider FireFox, Chrome, Safari, Opera)
-Have you installed any browser plugins? (Nuke what you can)
-Are you using Outlook? (Consider Thunderbird)

Then:
-CHANGE EVERY PASSWORD YOU HAVE. Everything in brackets above is free and works.

If you do the above and still have problems, re-install the system offline, then secure it offline (and do your bloody updates). The worst case scenario is that you were compromised and the attacker stole that info, and is using some other system to forge the mail headers and send shit to your friends. in which case they will hate you. (Forging mail headers is fun.)

 

[mandrill]

Run a malware program and change yr password and that will likely do the trick.

 

[nofrill]

Instead of your email actually being hacked, it is more likely the spammers only use the name of your email address to send their spam mail (click on the following to read more):

E-mail spoofing is e-mail activity in which the sender address and other parts of the e-mail header are altered to appear as though the e-mail originated from a different source. Because core SMTP doesn't provide any authentication, it is easy to impersonate and forge emails.

How did the spammer get hold of the name of your email address? They might have picked it up on your personal websites eg. resume, facebook which contains your personal information. You might have unintentionally given it out eg. free offer, free draw, to one of their email-harvesting schemes (not only spammers do this, everyone harvest information). One of your contacts might have unintentionally done this eg. "introduce our service to ten of your friends and families and we will give you 30% discount next time". In fact, we have so little control over our private information that sometime it is difficult to know how it could have leaked.

I am not saying your email password has not been hacked (if you really have one of those simple PWs like "1234"), but there are easier and better explanations.

Everything can be spoofed in the computer world - email addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses, MAC addresses, cellphone IMEI.

 

[The Options Menu]

Everything can be spoofed in the computer world - email addresses, phone numbers, IP addresses, MAC addresses, cellphone IMEI.

Email address are particularly easy... As in a few lines of script. MAC addresses are in the same league. IP addresses require tunnelling though proxies...

That still doesn't mean he shouldn't do a full malware and virus sweep, secure his box, and change all of his passwords afterwards... The fact that his address was scraped doesn't explain why his contacts are getting spammed, unless they peeled those of a social networking site. I'd go with malware for a dollar.

 

[Tangwhich]

Instead of your email actually being hacked, it is more likely the spammers only use the name of your email address to send their spam mail

This probably not the case. I've had quite a few friends get their account hacked. It emailed everyone in the address book. When they changed their passwords the spam stopped.