Q: Emails are being automatically sent from my Hotmail address to contacts contained in my Hotmail account contact list while my computer is off. The website attached to these unsolicited emails is of an organisation that calls itself ‘Canadian Health and Care Mall’. What do I need to do to stop these unsolicited emails from being sent out?
A: Welcome to the world of spam email. There are several possibilities here, the first is that these messages aren’t actually coming from your account at all, they simply have spoofed headers to make them look as though they’re from you. There’s not a lot you can do about this. The fact that messages are going to people in your address book, however, would suggest this isn’t the case.
The second possibility is that someone has hacked your Hotmail (now Windows Live) account password. This can occur via a ‘brute force’ attack trying different combinations, or more likely via another less secure website where you’ve used the same password. We’d recommend changing your security details by going to https://account.live.com. Change the password to something containing a mix of upper and lowercase letters and numbers. The third possibility is that you have a virus that’s accessing your account details and using them to send mail. You need to perform a complete scan of your system with an up to date antivirus program. It’s a good idea to do an additional scan using an online tool such as TrendMicro Housecall or Panda ActiveScan which should pick up anything your installed antivirus may have missed. Once you’ve detected and cleaned up any infection it’s worth changing your mail account password too.
Similar attacks have appeared on Gmail accounts in recent weeks too (more information on Bill Mullins’ blog here). The same security precautions and clean up techniques apply.
It’s a good idea to change your Windows Live password occasionally to protect your account
Originally featured in PCU125
{ 10 comments… read them below or add one }
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I too have had this problem with my hotmail account. I transferred all my contacts to a new yahoo email account and they are now going out from there. This happens usually in the early hours of the morning when my laptop is switched off and unplugged and whereas with the hotmail account I could see them in my sent box, nothing appears in my sent box on yahoo, the only way I know is when my contacts tell me they have received them. If you receive an untitled email with just a website address do not whatever you do open it.
I have no intention to join any of the “free” email outfits which are controlled by the “big wheelers”. All I want is for them to make it possible to contact them about issues they cause and should rectify. Have we become so ignorant that we totally seem to agree with their actions? There is no place to launch a serious complaint other the being referred to an “Indian” call centre that has no clue how to help anyone.
Thank you, Mike Gaensslen
The important part of computing, as noted in this valuable post, is to have an amazing, difficult-to-crack password. A mix of upper- and lower-case and numbers is the utmost minimum in terms of security.
The main issue here is being able to remember such a cryptic combination. Myself, I find it’s easiest to take a couple of words and employ a Magical Substitution. Letters often look like numbers: O’s look like zeroes, ‘A’s look like ’4′s, and so forth.
Choosing two arbitrary words, like “boat” and “melon”, and using my Magical Substitution method, could result in a password like “B04tM3l0n”. It’s easy to remember, and very secure.
I recently had an associate who had spam being automatically sent from her Hotmail account. As she is not overly computer savvy, I ended up advising her to take advantage of her ISP’s free email account offerings. This is probably the best way around it.
Having a virus scanner and malware preventer installed is good, too. Avast! Anti-Virus and Malwarebyte’s Anti-Malware software serve me well combined together, and the reviews on both products have been stupendous.
- Francis
So I have been reading about this spam issue! I too have been hit. I have a mac at work and at home. Is the possible virus in my email account or my computer. I Have been using macs for at least 18 years and never had any problems.
I have always been told not to use spam/virus software. I am not overly tech savvy and not sure where to start.
HELP!?!
Most likely is that your Hotmail or Gmail account has been compromised. It’s easy to tell with Gmail because the main screen shows the IP address that was last used to access the account. You should change the passwords.
On a Mac system it’s relatively unlikely you’ll have a virus on the machine. However, you should still use antivirus software to prevent you from inadvertently passing on viruses and infecting other systems. ClamXav (http://www.clamxav.com/ ) and Sophos (http://www.sophos.com/products/free-tools/free-mac-anti-virus/ ) are both available free for Macs.
Good post! I have a random question for you. How do you get your blog indexed by bing? I have a related web blog.
Bing should index your site automatically, though it’s rather slower than Google. You can help things along by ensuring you have relevant links from other locations to encourage the crawler to look at your site.