Someone used my email to send dodgy stuff to one of my contacts

freyanneke_2

deleted deleted deleted

ailuro2

Your pc has a virus that sends out spam/nasty stuff to all your email address book contacts. You have clicked on a link in a dodgy email, one of your contacts may even have downloaded a file and given himself more trouble.

Have you run your security to check for threats ?

macman

What AV program are you using (not AVG?) Run a full scan now-it take about two clicks.
Have you already changed your password-can you still log in to the account?
Are the dodgy emails sent to your contact showing in the 'Sent' folder? If not it's just address spoofing and not from your PC.
Do you store your passwords on the PC? If not you may have a keylogger installed.

skylight

I have a similar problem, but it sends standard rubbish to selections in my email account. Each time, I run malwarebytes, then my anti virus (I have Microsoft Security essentials) and after these I run CCleaner. Nothing ever appears as issues.

The emails are definately in my sent box of my outlook (from Hotmail.co.uk and just changedmy password on it)

I have Windows 7 installed.

macman

freyanneke wrote: »

I was using AVG. But I have an other comp now and it does not seem to have a virus scanner. What is the best virus scanner that can be used with Vista?

The emails are not turning up in my sent folder. Some of my passwords were stored on my comp. But I changed them several times and nothing is stored in my comp now. I tried to delete the account two weeks ago. It only opened with a password that I had changed several times before, which was odd. Then yesterday the account was activated. Not sure how or by who, but it started sending emails to this contact again. When I was notified, I logged into the account and nothing could be found in my sent folder. There were no emails logged from the date onwards of that I tried to deactivate the account and then yesterday it started to accept emails again. It is a bit spooky, as I said it is very specifically going to one contact. It even has personal info, like history and log files in.

Address spoofing? How on earth can I proof that I did not sent it?

You are running with no AV at all? For how long? So why are you so surprised that you are infected? It probably took about 20 minutes of time online..
Use Avira, Microsoft Security Essentials or Avast-all free. Or Kaspersky is free if you use Barclays online banking.
Download an AV, run a full scan and see what it finds.
I would remove all passwords from your PC (very insecure to store them on it), and change all your online passwords (if you can still access the accounts) from another machine.
Get your machine clean and secure and then worry about Hotmail.
And tell your contact not to open attachments within his email program It only takes seconds to place them on the desktop and scan them with your AV program if you're unsure about their provenance.

freyanneke_2

Not really how it was. It all happened before I changed computer. So I did have AV.

macman

But you had AVG (presumably the free edn), which IMHO (and many others) wouldn't catch lots of things. It's a very poor AV program these days.
But how you got it is frankly irrelevant. The point is that you're now running with no AV at all, so you're even worse off.
If you copied data from the old to the new then you may have simply copied over the infection.
Surely you're not telling us you changed your PC to try and get rid of the problem?

freyanneke_2

Lol, no I didn't think that changing my comp would sort it. And no data is copied on this harddrive. Any advice on a virus scanner? Best to sort it straight away, probably.

Aesop

macman wrote: »

Use Avira, Microsoft Security Essentials or Avast-all free. Or Kaspersky is free if you use Barclays online banking.
Download an AV, run a full scan and see what it finds.

macman has suggested these.

Do you have a Barclays account? Or your husband/partner?

Aesop

Just google the ones suggested by Macman, they will come up and then you can download and run a virus scan.

freyanneke_2

No, I don't have Barclays. I don't bank online, but Paypal.