Dekers Posted May 10, 2011 Report Share Posted May 10, 2011 I have all sorts of security on my accounts but it seems nothing is foolproof. It has become apparent today someone has got into my email account, and sent out a vast quantity of emails allegedly from me. May I take this opportunity to apologise if you have received something from Deker and are scratching your head. I really don't know what is happening but unless you are expecting a response from me please DELETE IMMEDIATELY ANYTHING FROM DEKER without opening it! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cranfield Posted May 10, 2011 Report Share Posted May 10, 2011 One of the most common ways for a Spammer to get your email address book, is by the circulation of those stupid jokes, charity appeals, etc., that friends send you, or sending or receiving an online greetings card (only the free ones). They bypass your security because you choose to open them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MaybeNextTime Posted May 10, 2011 Report Share Posted May 10, 2011 Could also just be spoofing your email address. This where they have no actual access to your mail credential but somehow pick up your email address. Because you are less like to be automatically blocked as a spammer than they are they pretend that their mail comes from you. Very annoying but next to nothing that you can do about it however it doesn't mean that you've been hacked. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ian E Posted May 10, 2011 Report Share Posted May 10, 2011 I second the spoof, if you still have access to your email accounts change your passwords ofc.. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Catweazle Posted May 10, 2011 Report Share Posted May 10, 2011 Look in your "Sent Items" to see if the emails really were sent from your account. A common thing is for a friend of yours to get a virus which looks for email addresses in their inbox then sends out emails pretending to be from one ( you ). The reasoning is that you probably have common friends with the hacked person so the emails will get opened and it will not alert the hacked person that they have been hacked. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dekers Posted May 10, 2011 Author Report Share Posted May 10, 2011 Look in your "Sent Items" to see if the emails really were sent from your account. A common thing is for a friend of yours to get a virus which looks for email addresses in their inbox then sends out emails pretending to be from one ( you ). The reasoning is that you probably have common friends with the hacked person so the emails will get opened and it will not alert the hacked person that they have been hacked. Unfortunately they have been, to be honest I am s******g myself as I try to get this sorted..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Catweazle Posted May 10, 2011 Report Share Posted May 10, 2011 Unfortunately they have been, to be honest I am s******g myself as I try to get this sorted..... I know the feeling, lost my mobile phone in a pub once and some **** made some unpleasant calls to people stored in it. I'd love to get hold of them. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dr W Posted May 11, 2011 Report Share Posted May 11, 2011 I had something similar on my yahoo account. I changed the passwords and it appears to have resolved the problem. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vince Green Posted May 11, 2011 Report Share Posted May 11, 2011 (edited) Unfortunately they have been, to be honest I am s******g myself as I try to get this sorted..... I have had this and it can't be got rid of I am reliably told by people who know because its in a part of the software that can't be purged. Its very clever and extremely sneaky It will continue happening. This is what you have to do, go into your address book and introduce a fatal flaw into every single email address so that when your virus sends out an email the address fails and the message gets returned to you unsent. So somebody@hotmail.co.uk becomes s-omebody@hotmail.co.uk or soombody@hotmail.co.uk.etc Basically you use the same flaw for every address, like putting in a fake third letter or whatever and then you have to remember to manually delete it before you send any message using that address. you very soon get used to it though. Don't use spaces because the virus software is already clever enough to remove spaces. About once a week I switch on my computer to find that I have a load of returned email messages that I have not sent but as they all failed they are safe. It might be worth going through your address book and deleting a load that you don't use and the ones that you very rarely use write them down somewhere and delete them off as well. With the virus I have it won't go even if I dump this computer and go back to my old laptop because the virus isn't in my computer now it has transferred itself to my files held by my service privider. Although why they can't purge it is a debate for another day. I hope this is useful to you Edited May 11, 2011 by Vince Green Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
al4x Posted May 11, 2011 Report Share Posted May 11, 2011 I had something similar on my yahoo account. I changed the passwords and it appears to have resolved the problem. this should sort the problem, I had it on my hotmail account ages ago, some chinese bod got lucky with hacking the password. New one and has been fine ever since, Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MaybeNextTime Posted May 11, 2011 Report Share Posted May 11, 2011 I have had this and it can't be got rid of I am reliably told by people who know because its in a part of the software that can't be purged. Its very clever and extremely sneaky It will continue happening. Sounds like ******** to me. I bet you any sum of money you like (up to 10p even) that if I format his drive and reinstall his OS and mail app with new, secure passwords then this would indeed stop. If they originating from your box then you just need to find the virus that is mailing them and kill it. Prolly best to change the mail server's name to something else until you are sure it's gone otherwise it'll just keep sending them. That way you can carry on using Yahoo via a browser rather than outlook/thunderbird. I realise that differentiating an app from a virus can be a challenge in MicroSoftLand but that's the quality of the software that you've bought, sir :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vince Green Posted May 11, 2011 Report Share Posted May 11, 2011 Sounds like ******** to me. I bet you any sum of money you like (up to 10p even) that if I format his drive and reinstall his OS and mail app with new, secure passwords then this would indeed stop. If they originating from your box then you just need to find the virus that is mailing them and kill it. Prolly best to change the mail server's name to something else until you are sure it's gone otherwise it'll just keep sending them. That way you can carry on using Yahoo via a browser rather than outlook/thunderbird. I realise that differentiating an app from a virus can be a challenge in MicroSoftLand but that's the quality of the software that you've bought, sir :-) I'm told that my particular nasty lurks in my contact file which is on AOL's mainframe. The first thing I did when I got the problem was switched off my laptop and disconnected it. Even so the messages were still going out. So nothing that can be done to my hard drive will have any effect although I did have it completely wiped and reinstalled as part of the investigation in case it was a multiple bug which had other things lurking. The man who did it is a qualified systems engineer not just a mate down the pub and he seemed to know what it was doing. Deliberately corrupting my contact file was his suggestion and it seems to work. I don't really know enough about it to say any more than that. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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