3 replies to this topic

[jonregester]

Firstly sorry if I have posted this in the wrong place. My hotmail account has been sending emails containing links without my knowledge, on one occaision more than fifty were sent in one day. I am also starting to lose contacts so I need to act quick. Any help greatly appreciated.

[Jimbo1]

Firstly sorry if I have posted this in the wrong place.
My hotmail account has been sending emails containing links without my knowledge, on one occaision more than fifty were sent in one day.
I am also starting to lose contacts so I need to act quick.
Any help greatly appreciated.

Hiya jonregester, sorry to hear about your problems with the e-mail account
Here is what I would do first.

A. If you supect that your e-mail account is hacked or hijacked, I would do this.

1. Log on to your account and change your password to something else to insure no one has access to it.
2. Read over this to see if you can find any help from this. http://windowslivehe...39-225f76864553

or try this one: http://windowslivehe...nt-hijacks.aspx

As I said best to do the first item to insure you have full control over your account.

[Doug]

Hi jonregester

In addition to the important steps recommended by Jimbo1 in the post above, please consider the following.

If possible attempt to reconstruct in memory how/when this may have occurred. (difficult, I know)

1. If you fell victim to a phishing scam, you may have openly provided your information to the entity which is now exploiting your email account.

2. You may have recently used a laptop machine at a public internet access point such as an internet cafe', a hotel, a restaurant or coffee shop, an airport, a sporting arena, etc. where the access you used was not sufficiently safe-guarded, and your information may have been lifted without your awareness.

3. You may have recently used equipment belonging to someone else to access your email account and that equipment may not have been safe-guarded or may have been infected, compromising your security and information.

4. Your own machine may have become infected by virus, trojan, spyware which compromised your information directly from your own machine.

If number #1 is your situation, the information provided in the links by Jimbo1 may or may not be sufficient to recover from your situation.

If number #2 or #3 is the case, then your information may be literally out-of-your-control, but changing username and password still "might" contain the situation.

If number #4 is the case, then none of the above steps will help you until you clear your machine of the malware that exploited you.
In fact, if you use the same infected machine to change your username and password, the new information will probably be passed right along to the same bad-guys again, via the same malware infection.

Therefore, you should use a "known-good/safe" machine and internet connection with which to change your username and password.

*** Just to be sure, and because the likelihood is high that your own machine has become infected, you should consider heading over to our Malware Removal Forums to get a check up and remove any infection that may exist.

Read Here:
Post here

[Jimbo1]

Good Point Doug and aye did not think about doing those options first. 1. Always best to see if your machine is not infected and would be best to head over to the malware section first. 2. It may be best to use a clean machine to change out your password or to block out a hacked account.