Email hacked?

titaniumx3 · 9 Feb 2011 at 22:19

I just found out that a spam email was sent to everyone in my gmail contact list - does this mean it was hacked or is there any other way this could have happened?

Pretty annoyed as my password is pretty long! :mad:

Rocker · 9 Feb 2011 at 22:20

Unlikely it has been hacked!
There are a few ways that can happen/be done.

Chnage it anyway!

tntcoder · 9 Feb 2011 at 22:22

If it was in your sent items then essentially yes (cracked is the correct word).
- Change all your passwords from a trusted safe OS.
- Make sure there's no bad stuff on your current OS - malware, trojans etc.
- Don't use weak passwords.

titaniumx3 · 9 Feb 2011 at 22:46

I checked my sent folder and the spam email is not there, but judging by the fact that it was sent to everyone in my contact list, I assume my email account must have been compromised somehow. Embarrased and annoyed to say the least, luckily my brother informed straight away so I've just sent an letter of apology to everyone.

I've already checked my PC for malware and it seems to be clean, plus I've never had malware on this computer and have no reason to, so I'm just hoping it was just me being unlucky here.

Of course, I've now changed my password to an uber long and complex string!

bledd · 9 Feb 2011 at 22:55

Do you have an Andriod phone linked to the account?

A bad application could do this

titaniumx3 · 9 Feb 2011 at 23:32

bledd. said:
Do you have an Andriod phone linked to the account?

A bad application could do this

Don't have an Android phone.

Still a little spooked about this and have since changed passwords to my other website accounts.

iviv · 10 Feb 2011 at 09:54

Open gmail, go to the bottom of the page where it says:
Last account activity: 0 minutes ago at this IP (<snip>). And hit the details button.

Should show you all the IPs that have accessed the account, and how. Hope this helps.

Sunbed · 10 Feb 2011 at 11:38

Just because people say that they received an email from you, it doesn't mean that your account actually sent the email.

Someone is probably faking your email address on the sever, I believe it's quite easy to do, but never done it.

Look at "show original" in gmail to check IP of sent sever etc

iviv · 10 Feb 2011 at 11:43

Sundance said:
Just because people say that they received an email from you, it doesn't mean that your account actually sent the email.

Someone is probably faking your email address on the sever, I believe it's quite easy to do, but never done it.

Look at "show original" in gmail to check IP of sent sever etc

Surely just faking the email wouldn't get all his contacts to send the emails to, though?

ZeniTimes · 10 Feb 2011 at 11:55

it very easy to spoof email accounts and make it look like it has come from your account.

The most worrying thing is how they got access to your contacts list

Sunbed · 10 Feb 2011 at 12:07

iviv said:
Surely just faking the email wouldn't get all his contacts to send the emails to, though?

ZeniTimes said:
it very easy to spoof email accounts and make it look like it has come from your account.

The most worrying thing is how they got access to your contacts list

OP: you use MSN Messenger or something where you have added gmail to it?

A virus or something could retrieve your contacts list this way.

ZeniTimes · 10 Feb 2011 at 12:42

Sundance said:
A virus or something could retrieve your contacts list this way.

This is the most likely cause, seen this loads of times.

Change the password to your gmail account

Then run a full system scan on your machine

titaniumx3 · 10 Feb 2011 at 16:10

iviv said:
Open gmail, go to the bottom of the page where it says:
Last account activity: 0 minutes ago at this IP (<snip>). And hit the details button.

Should show you all the IPs that have accessed the account, and how. Hope this helps.

Just did this and all of them are from my own IP address except on entry from some address in Portugal, which happened at the same time the email was sent.

So it seems my password was compromised. Now I'm worried if it was malware on my computer or I just got unlucky and my password was cracked?

Sunbed · 10 Feb 2011 at 16:15

titaniumx3 said:
Just did this and all of them are from my own IP address except on entry from some address in Portugal, which happened at the same time the email was sent.

So it seems my password was compromised. Now I'm worried if it was malware on my computer or I just got unlucky and my password was cracked?

Do you use the same password for anything else? How strong is it? Any chance of a keylogger on your system?

titaniumx3 · 10 Feb 2011 at 22:07

Sundance said:
Do you use the same password for anything else? How strong is it? Any chance of a keylogger on your system?

I only used it for the email and some forums. It wasn't actually that strong come to think of it, but I didn't think it would actually be cracked someday.

I doubt I have a keylogger on my system. I'm a little paranoid when it comes to things running on my PC and as far as I know there's nothing running that I'm not aware of (no unusual processes running in the background). I also checked my entire PC for viruses and malware yesterday and it came up clean.