MSN password hackers

Lima

Lima

Lima

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Joined
1 Sep 2010
Posts
1,438
Location
Herts
Hi,

Recently my MSN hotmail account was hacked. It was then used by some sort of bot to send out those stupid spam/virus link emails to loads of my contacts. Has this happened to anyone else on here? I think all is OK (hopefully) now as MSN blocked the account and I was asked to issue a phone number they could send a text message code to, to verify my account. I then put this code in the login screen and it allowed me to reset my password.

I'm aware that this is a common issue as its happened to friends of mine that i've received spam emails from in the past.

What I'm curious about is how they (person/bot) obtained my password? I'm pretty sure everything I download is safe. About a few weeks ago when i was on a TV streaming website (notorious with pop-ups) i got a warning from my antivirus that it detected some trojan hiden in my temporary internet files. I instantly quarantined it then deleted it. Could this still be the cause?

I use my PC to login to loads of things including bank accounts and an online poker site and would like to be confident that I haven't got a keylogger virus or something on my computer.

My computer protection is:

Antivir virus protection
Spybot Search and Destroy
Windows firewall

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks
 
My wife had the same problem a while back, cant remember what site I saw it on but changing the password was one way to stop it. It wasnt a hack of sorts but the article said it was ghosting accounts because if you check your sent folder there is nothing in there. Could be wrong though.
 
My password wasnt very complicated. Just a 1 word no number password. I dont use the exact same password on anything else, but i do use a slightly more complicated version as my main password on most of my logins.
 
I had this happen a few weeks ago, thing is my hotmail account is basically for spam only anyway. When I contacted support they said it was most likely ghosted, not hacked.
 
To clarify - I checked my sent folder and saw the spam emails and who they were sent to in the sent folder. Not sure if this helps establish if it was ghosted or actually hacked.
 
MSN/Hotmail password crackers are for the most part fake, just type it into youtube and theres loads of videos of people just typing email addresses and then the password magically appears. The odds are your password was very simple and a bot brute forced it
 
Lima said:
My password wasnt very complicated. Just a 1 word no number password. I dont use the exact same password on anything else, but i do use a slightly more complicated version as my main password on most of my logins.
Click to expand...


Thought so :P

Time you got a much more complicated set of passwords.

Take the time to redo them all as they will be working on any obvious other sites that your hotmail has pointed them towards.
 
Sounds like a bot that didnt get round to deleting its traces (sent items). If it was a 'smart' person, they woulda used the account to do password resets on accounts associated with it and gained access to those. So, like above, you may way to think about changing all your passwords.
 
hate it when this happens, always think did I sleep walk in the middle of the night and send emails to myself about worthless crap lol. Change of password every few weeks makes it ok.
 
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