Do I have a Virus on my AOL account? Help please...

thatsfabulous

Have logged onto my AOL account this morning to find over 150 emails most of them say [EMAIL="MAILER-DAEMON@AOL.COM"]MAILER-DAEMON@AOL.COM[/EMAIL] and the rest are Out Of Hours respsonces from emails addresses its emailed.
These Mailer Daemon emails are received between 1.45am-5am.
Looks like everyone who I have ever sent an email to has received/ almost received an email/message of me??
Have looked in my Sent box and theres no emails which I havent sent in there.
Help :eek:

jaxjax123

Ive had this before when I phone tech support they just told me to change my password.

JasX

No you don't have a virus on your AOL account, thats not technically possible.

You either have a virus on your home computer you've used to access your AOL account and that is sending out spam

or

Your username / password / security questions have been compromised when you've accessed it from an infected machine 'somewhere' and a computer somewhere else is using it to send out spam

or

Your username/password was particularly weak and has been guessed by a computer similar to the above.


First step is change your password and all security questions/info. Then go looking for viruses on your PCs.

thatsfabulous

Ok thank you to you both for your help. Have now changed my password.
This account has only recently been accessed on a brand new computer Ive just bought or by my Iphone? Do you think it may be my Iphone?

Trinitrotoluene

JasX wrote: »

First step is change your password and all security questions/info. Then go looking for viruses on your PCs.

I don't agree. The first step should be removing the viruses - no good if you change your password on the same PC and it just re-reports the new password!

tronator

JasX wrote: »

No you don't have a virus on your AOL account, thats not technically possible.

You either have a virus on your home computer you've used to access your AOL account and that is sending out spam

or

Your username / password / security questions have been compromised when you've accessed it from an infected machine 'somewhere' and a computer somewhere else is using it to send out spam

or

Your username/password was particularly weak and has been guessed by a computer similar to the above.


First step is change your password and all security questions/info. Then go looking for viruses on your PCs.

How about the most likely possibility that somebody just used the OP's email address to send SPAM? Could be an infected PC of a friend who has his and all the other people's email addresses in his address book.

It can't hurt to change the password to something not used anywhere else though...

JasX

thatsfabulous wrote: »

Ok thank you to you both for your help. Have now changed my password.
This account has only recently been accessed on a brand new computer Ive just bought or by my Iphone? Do you think it may be my Iphone?

Iphone, no, not likely at all.

do however be sure your 'new' computer has anti virus software on (a good free one) and is set to automatically install microsoft security patches

tronator wrote: »

How about the most likely possibility that somebody just used the OP's email address to send SPAM? Could be an infected PC of a friend who has his and all the other people's email addresses in his address book.

It can't hurt to change the password to something not used anywhere else though...

yes could well be being spoofed too, in which case won;t be much you can do about it but changing passwords regularly is always good practice

Trinitrotoluene wrote: »

I don't agree. The first step should be removing the viruses - no good if you change your password on the same PC and it just re-reports the new password!

I still disagree, even if you are correct the changed password will take quite some time to be reported back and put into use so genuine spamming will be immediately blocked, then having made some breathing space if you find you were infected you can change the password again.... if however you never were locally infected no more action needed