Hotmail - spam emails are being sent via my account

philstanbridge · 30 Oct 2010 at 22:06

I know you're probably going to say I need to ditch Hotmail, but I've had the account for years, and I use it regularly, and I really don't want to lose it. But recently I've discovered it must have been hacked. First thing I realised was a load of undeliverables in my inbox - so I deleted all my contacts and it went quiet. I ended up adding a few back, and within a few days it's happened again. So someone or some random spam generator thingy is using my contact list. Is there any way I can combat this apart from deleting the account?

I have Kaspersky 2011 on my pc, and I also have Malwarebytes, with no apparent problems detected. I also changed my passwords. But one thing Kaspersky did report when I installed the new AV, a little while back now, was that I had 4 open ports - which were immediately closed. I thought this might be something to do with my NAS, or perhaps a game or something, but I'm not sure.

SiriusB · 30 Oct 2010 at 22:21

You should change your password on a different machine. Though if you have ever used hotmail on any other machine the password could have been stolen there.

Have the emails continued since changing the password?

johnyccc · 30 Oct 2010 at 22:33

This happened to me and I looked into it (via google :cool:

) I think theres a chance the spam isn't actually being sent from your account but rather you opened/clicked something you shouldn't have and a BOT got your contacts. It then "phishes" your address when spamming.
But I could be wrong :eek:

asim18 · 30 Oct 2010 at 22:47

philstanbridge said:
First thing I realised was a load of undeliverables in my inbox

I had the exact same issue once. Tonnes of emails being sent from my domain without my knowledge, and tonnes of Delivery failure notices in my inbox. Someone was using my domain to send mail somehow using an external SMTP server.

I disabled Outbound Relay in my Google Apps CP and the problem has been fixed.

You should have ditched hotmail and moved to Gmail when it came out, like most of us

.

philstanbridge · 30 Oct 2010 at 23:03

SiriusB said:
You should change your password on a different machine. Though if you have ever used hotmail on any other machine the password could have been stolen there.

Have the emails continued since changing the password?

Cheers for the replies.

I access hotmail on two machines, and yes the emails have continued since I changed the password. It's happened only once since changing though, which was earlier today. I've only got 3 contacts now after deleting everyone else - damage limitation of sorts.

SlyReaper · 30 Oct 2010 at 23:04

asim18 said:
I had the exact same issue once. Tonnes of emails being sent from my domain without my knowledge, and tonnes of Delivery failure notices in my inbox. Someone was using my domain to send mail somehow using an external SMTP server.

I disabled Outbound Relay in my Google Apps CP and the problem has been fixed.

You should have ditched hotmail and moved to Gmail when it came out, like most of us .

Speaking of moving emails, how do you get hotmail to forward all your emails to your new address?

philstanbridge · 30 Oct 2010 at 23:06

I will ditch the account if I have to, but it's handy and I've used it for years. Plus it's linked up to Messenger. It's as if my account is being used as the gateway. Emails are obviously from my account but there is a .ru address in the contents.

ZG002 · 30 Oct 2010 at 23:10

I had this same problem, Changed my password and it seems to have stopped. I did full scans using a fair few programs and nothing was found on my system.

Pretty annoying.

philstanbridge · 30 Oct 2010 at 23:12

ZG002 said:
I had this same problem, Changed my password and it seems to have stopped. I did full scans using a fair few programs and nothing was found on my system.

Pretty annoying.

yeah it certainly is, although it's pretty clever too. Damn people who do it.I've just realised my laptop has no AV software on it :eek:

so I'm downloading some as I write this.

SiriusB · 31 Oct 2010 at 00:09

SlyReaper said:
Speaking of moving emails, how do you get hotmail to forward all your emails to your new address?

Hotmail Inbox > Options > More Options > Email forwarding

MR.B · 31 Oct 2010 at 04:50

Theres an article on this here.

If the messages are actually in your sent folder then it's very likely someone has gained access to your account. If not, you're probably ok, 'cause it's possible to use your address but not actually gain access to your email account.
I'd change the password on something else anyway, and make it pretty long/complex. Maybe use your phone to do it.

demonix · 31 Oct 2010 at 14:03

MR.B said:
If the messages are actually in your sent folder then it's very likely someone has gained access to your account. If not, you're probably ok, 'cause it's possible to use your address but not actually gain access to your email account.

That isn't exactly true since one of my yahoo accounts was compromised last year and they sent spam out to everyone that had sent me e-mail in the past and then they cleared out the sent box (I knew this because I'd sent a lot of job applications and other things through that account and they were all in the sent box and after all the spam was sent out they were all gone).

philstanbridge · 31 Oct 2010 at 14:33

Something odd is going on here. Changed my hotmail password again today, and everything was running fine. Then went to check my emails again half hour back, and it said I needed to sign in again, yet i hadn't signed out. I'm confused.

Also, how do you tell if there is a key logger installed?