Is there such a thing as an email scanner

balloo_2

Hi my sisters hotmail is sending out scam and some nude pics sites to all her contacts. I told her to change the P/W on her hotmail and i believe she did but these email keep coming now they have started coming from my other sisters account who opened an email from her sister (thats mine also) My Father just passed away and we were sending lots of emails about his estate so a lot of the time they opened any emails from each other automatically. We are all not techie minded so thats why i am asking you for help Please.

jayme1

how are they getting the email? ie logging on the web at hotmail.com or using a program like live mail or thunderbird?

when they opened the email did it ask them to log in to hotmail again? cause that is likely how the spammer got the password.
because just opening an email is unlikely to cause spam to be sent.

they both should change their password again, on a known clean computer, that could be yours or something like an internet enabled smartphone (ie android or iOS device).

then to rule out an infection get them both to download and install malwarebytes (the free one) make sure it's up-to-date and then give their computers a full scan, if it comes back clean then they likely don't have a virus.
also make sure they have some form of antivirus if they dont then you can use avast for free which also has an email scanner if they are using a program (like thunderbird) to check their emails.

if then after all this spam is still being sent out then the spammers are likely just spoofing her address in that case you would just have to mark the spam messages as junk and don't click any links in the emails, and only log into hotmail at the proper site. (but changing the password and virus scanning should stop them)

NeverAgain_2

A friend of mine's hotmail account was hacked in a similar way.

His conclusion is the only way to sort it is to dump that address and register a new one.

The hacker now has your sister's email contacts, so there's nothing to stop him continuing to send spam to those addresses.

I got several spam messages a day from my friend's hacked account, but they stopped after a week or so.

balloo_2

jayme1 wrote: »

how are they getting the email? ie logging on the web at hotmail.com or using a program like live mail or thunderbird?

when they opened the email did it ask them to log in to hotmail again? cause that is likely how the spammer got the password.
because just opening an email is unlikely to cause spam to be sent.

they both should change their password again, on a known clean computer, that could be yours or something like an internet enabled smartphone (ie android or iOS device).

then to rule out an infection get them both to download and install malwarebytes (the free one) make sure it's up-to-date and then give their computers a full scan, if it comes back clean then they likely don't have a virus.
also make sure they have some form of antivirus if they dont then you can use avast for free which also has an email scanner if they are using a program (like thunderbird) to check their emails.

if then after all this spam is still being sent out then the spammers are likely just spoofing her address in that case you would just have to mark the spam messages as junk and don't click any links in the emails, and only log into hotmail at the proper site. (but changing the password and virus scanning should stop them)

In my case everytime i check my email there is a email from one or the other sister in the Inbox. I dont open it just delete it but in my sisters case they see a message from one of us they automatically open it because they know us. My Sisters dont understand a lot about computers they only use it for Facebook and looking for simple things Holidays, Insurance etc etc.