Someone using my email address and sending SPAM to all my contacts -HELP.

stressedoutmum

Last week a message was sent from my email address (hotmail) recommending an electrical website and my contact list disappeared. At the same time I received the following message on my email (which I hadnt set)

Your automatic vacation reply is still on. To stop telling people you're away, go to Options.

I wrote to report abuse@hotmail but got a message back asking to send the email as an attachment including the from part however the 'from' part is my name?

It has happened again tonight and its really embarassing as some of the contacts on my list are business contacts and not just friends - so it appears I'm sending them rubbish.

When I check on my sent box I have not actually sent it.

Have done a full check on the system and can't find any problems - its driving me mad as my contact list has all disappeared again and I need to find a way of recovering it again. I'm really nervous about setting up my contact list again as I dont want everyone on it to keep getting these rubbish emails. Hotmail don't seem to be any help.

Can someone tell me what's wrong. thanks.

isofa

Spammers often spoof emails to look like they are from other addresses (it's incredibly easy), just ignore it and delete the messages, I get hundreds a week, all trapped by the junk filters.

However if your contact list has disappeared maybe it has been compromised, so change your password on your hotmail account and if you are really worried, setup a new account and close down the old one, then tell everyone your new address.

HappyIdiotTalk

As the previous poster suggested, spammers will spoof email addresses of real people so as to look authentic. This is a pain but nothing to worry about, its just one of the annoying tactics spammers use.

However, it sounds to me as though your computer might be infected with some kind of worm or virus. One of the methods used by worms and viruses to propagate once on a fresh PC is to open the email address book of the owner and email a copy of itself to everyone in the list. I'm guessing you use a email program of some sort on the PC, Outlook Express or something?

I dont think this is something Hotmail will be able to help with to be honest. The first step is to see if you do indeed have some kind of infection. Have you got an antivirus program installed? If so update it and do a full system scan. Or try this online scan from Kaspersky:

http://www.kaspersky.co.uk/virusscanner

stressedoutmum

Thanks for advice so far. I've got Malware/Spybot and Avast and have run them all and nothing has shown nothing on any of them. I wouldnt be bothered if I was the only one to get the emails but my contacts all get them - then they email me to see if its genuine so its a real pain. I have changed my password but dont really want to change the email address. This has happened twice now and each time my contact list disappears. The message seems to get sent through the vacation notification thing where you can send and out off office reply when you're away. I then go into the vacation planner and have to delete the message. I have not made my contact list up again as I don't want to keep spamming my contacts (friends and business).

Valli

Out of interest was it some chinese electricals/laptop website?
Cos I had an e mail from a colleague about this...which he did not, apparently, send...
and do I need to worry?

stressedoutmum

Yes - both emails now have been advertising cheap electrical stuff although can't remember the sites as I never clicked onto them. Apparently you don't have to worry - I think its the people that 'appear' to send them out that just get cheesed off. Ive done loads of scans on my computer and nothing has been found. MSN are not very good at replying to these things you just get sent from pillar to post but reading from others having similar problems they are aware of it but I dont want to send anything that might cause others problems.

HappyIdiotTalk

Hummm could you run a scan using the link I posted above. You'll need to do it in Internet Explorer, and scan the whole computer (it think you click 'My Computer' for that).

Try that and post back if it finds anything.