Help re virus please

Ess-six

Yesterday I mistakenly left my Hotmail account open, and when I returned six hours later I had two 'out of office' replies from people I hardly ever mail, both with a different header subject - one was 'Feel the Love' and the other 'Take it To Your Life'.

I checked my sent folder to see 'I' had sent about 12 of my addressbook contacts a message thanking them for a Tiffany bracelet and with a web linkk, and another 12 a message telling them wher I had bough some boots from, again with a web link.

Both links had russian/greek type symbols at the start and end, and the wording of the message was not the sort of phraseology I would use, so I'm hoping that the people that know me would realise and not open the link, and the business contact would also see it for what it was.

However if I hadn't had the 'out of office' messages, I would have had no idea that these emails had been sent in my name.

So my question to you all is a) have I got a virus myself, if so how do I deal with it, and b) have I passed this onto everyone even if they haven't opened the link?

I did send everyone a further email telling them not to open the link, but it was 6 hours after the originals had gone out.

I have the Virgin Media broadbank anti-virus software installed and Windows Vista operating system.

Incidentally I installed some updates yesterday that the system asked me to do, including IE8.

Sorry for the long post......I'm not at all techie-minded and have spend a sleepless night worrying about this.

busenbust

It would be a good idea to run a system virus scan (full and complete) on your computer, yes. I am not familiar with what Virgin provide but it might be a good idea to download Avast or Avg instead. Ensure your firewall is enabled also. What of malware protection? Microsoft Security Essentials is quite decent. http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/

Do not suffer from sleepless nights over this;)

Oh, and if using IE8 you might want to switch to the more secure Firefox.

Lorian

You almost certainly did not send these emails, someone will have sent the spam in you name. Anyone can do this. There is nothing to stop me sending spam as you if I know your email address (other than I'm not a spammer of course!)

What you have is probably backscatter. more info here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_(e-mail)

Ess-six

Thanks Busenbust.

The Virgin software is running it's weekly anti-spyware scan at the moment, I'll do a complete system scan as soon as it's finished.

Should I uninstall IE8?

Lorian

Actually I re-read your message, and missed that they were from people in you knew. You should definitely run checks on your system.

busenbust

Ess-six wrote: »

Thanks Busenbust.

The Virgin software is running it's weekly anti-spyware scan at the moment, I'll do a complete system scan as soon as it's finished.

Should I uninstall IE8?

No need to uninstall. But I would definitely switch to Firefox; you'll love it

Ess-six

Lorian wrote: »

Actually I re-read your message, and missed that they were from people in you knew. You should definitely run checks on your system.

No, they appeared to be sent from me to people in my contacts list. The email appeared in my sent folder even though I hadn't sent it myself.

GunJack

Download Malwarebytes from here:-

http://www.filehippo.com/download_malwarebytes_anti_malware/

download latest version, update and full scan. Post the log back here.

Then, get HiJack This from here:-

http://www.filehippo.com/download_hijackthis/

download latest, run a scan and post the logfile up here. DO NOT try and Fix anything in HJT without advice.

Ess-six

GunJack wrote: »

Download Malwarebytes from here:-

http://www.filehippo.com/download_malwarebytes_anti_malware/

download latest version, update and full scan. Post the log back here.

Then, get HiJack This from here:-

http://www.filehippo.com/download_hijackthis/

download latest, run a scan and post the logfile up here. DO NOT try and Fix anything in HJT without advice.

Thanks GunJack, am 24 mins into the filehippo scan, will post as soon as it's finished

aliEnRIK

Ess-six wrote: »

Thanks GunJack, am 24 mins into the filehippo scan, will post as soon as it's finished

Its definitely MALWAREBYTES youve downloaded yes?

Ess-six

Yes, definitely.