Hotmail Hijacked?

donny-gal

I have received an email from a long established female family history contact, but the email looks like one of the typical African "I need money" jobs, so I think here hotmail address may have been hijacked. I do not have an alternative email for her, or her snailmail address, how can I let microsoft know the situation?

Don't worry I am not daft enough to fall for it or to answer it.

wakandem

Just delete the e-mail, inform the user of the hotmail address and advise they change their password. Her address is being used by someone to send out spam, she should however recieve any mails you send her as normal, she probably doesn't know that her mail address is being used. Microsoft won't be able to do anything, they have bigger fish to fry.

saubryn

The chances are that her account is fine - it is very easy to fake the email address that an email comes from. It's still worth her changing her password, just in case (you should always change them periodically anyway) - but spammers often forge email addresses - it makes it that little harder for people to track down where the spam really came from.

donny-gal

I was loath to respond to the email address in case it had been scammed and they would have confirmation of my address.

Thanks
DG

Voyager2002

donny-gal wrote: »

I was loath to respond to the email address in case it had been scammed and they would have confirmation of my address.

Thanks
DG

Good point.

It would take a few moments to create a new hotmail address, a few more to explain to her why you are using it.

donny-gal

Thats a point, I have an old address I dont use now! Thanks

GreenNotM

have a look at the headers of the email - for the original sender and return addresses - see if they all match - do not open links or download graphics etc...

It may be your friends pc has had their Outlook or PC is being used as a spam bot - you need to tell her - do not reply to the 419 type email as it may have different return address - not the one you really see. Send a brand new email with the address you have.

Also it may not be her pc - but somebody in your circle of friends that has a comprimised pc and it is being harvested for email addresses - Emails may even being sent with your name on them....