Email Hacked

[TB Roye]

One of my Email accounts Contact list has been hacked and is sending out Emails. Wha do I do. I have not clue what to do and where it came from. Other contact lists are ok. I am afraid to use this account but would like to Notify the people on of what is going on. I think I might have gotten it while using iPhone and with it small type and clicked on something by accident. The emails are visious and don't seem to contain virus but give a link. Help

Tom

[dbhost]

It sounds like whatever device you were using to access email got compromised.

Take it offline, and clean it up. Kind of hard to do with a phone, but disable all your networking, run anti virus, anti spyware apps against it (you DO have those on your phone, computer etc... right?)

Next from a different access device, (known good, not compromised) access the account in question, and reset the credentials so that passwords have to be busted to get back in...

As a rule you want your password to have at least 8 characters, mix of upper, and lower case, letters, numbers, and extended characters. Mind you, not all email services support this. Abide by your providers password policy, but make the password as strong as possible.

THEN notify those on your contact list of the breach.

[cwsmith]

This happened to me this past spring with my AOL account.

As I understand it, in my particular case, it was not so much that my AOL account was hacked as it was some other sites that I am a member of, WAS. What caused the problem for me was that I had used the same password on both accounts.

As explained to me, what occurred was that the access/sign-on to the other site was breached, but all the perpetrators got was the list of members and thier sign-on passwords, and of course their ISP addresses.

These kind of breeches are usually automated "robo" incidents. Once the name and password information and the home ISP is obtained, that information is then used to "find" new accounts for robo-mailing.

They simply go to your ISP and use the name and password to see if you were dumb enough to use it there... in which case, I WAS! So, they now have access to my E-mail and with just a quick piece of code, they do a quick mailing to all of your top E-mail addresses.

In my case, my son called me and asked if I thought he really needed "Viagra" (one of the robo-mailings). A quick check of my "SENT" messages and I quickly saw that all thirty-some of the e-mails addresses in my top directory had been used. Fortunately, none of the sub-directories were touched.

Cure was a quick change of my AOL password, so further access was blocked immediately. Since then, I change the password often and I've taken steps to ensure that I don't use the same password on other websites.

I then sent an apologetic message to everyone on my master-directory. While innocent enough on my part, it was still an embarrassing moment.

I don't know if there is any kind of software that can prevent this kind of intrusion. When you read of other sites being breeched, the fear is that your information will be obtained and used. For my particular experience, it was easy to fix and relatively easy to guard against. Hopefully your situation will be similar.

I hope this helps,

CWS

[TB Roye]

Thank for the help. Finially got to where I need to go in Yahoo.com mail. God the make it to find what you need. Changed the password and a few other settings. Will send out an Email to all and let them know. I will also tell them to contact me if any thing else happens over night.

Tom

[BobSch]

This may not be your case, but someone used my email address they harvested from a message sent with a list of addresses in the CC (carbon copy) field. Those addresses are sent in the clear, always use BCC (blind carbon copy) if you're sending to a bunch of people.

[cabinetman]

This may not be your case, but someone used my email address they harvested from a message sent with a list of addresses in the CC (carbon copy) field. Those addresses are sent in the clear, always use BCC (blind carbon copy) if you're sending to a bunch of people.

That can do it. Another email I don't continue is the one that someone you know sends you some type of petition, or something for you to send to "10" friends. Along with the petition or whatever it was that was sent to your friend, there can be a tag along.

.

[BobSch]

That can do it. Another email I don't continue is the one that someone you know sends you some type of petition, or something for you to send to "10" friends. Along with the petition or whatever it was that was sent to your friend, there can be a tag along.

.

The computer generation's version of a chain letter. The only place I'll put those is in the trash.

[durango dude]

a) if you haven't done this yet - change your e-mail passwords (all of them)

b) Go through your contact list --- if you don't need the contact information, remove it from your contact list.

c) clean up your computer, using the utility of your choice
(I really like Malwarebytes and Glary utilities, and recommend both).

In the future, don't click anything you get in e-mail - even from sources that look legitimate. 90 percent of embedded links are not necessary.

I got nabbed for the first time ever, by a contact harvester two weeks ago. It happened when I clicked a perfectly good looking linked in notification - which turned out to be from something other than linkedin. Good news is - I don't use contacts, much --- so it only transmitted the bad link to a half dozen people (fortunately, all had the sense not to click through).

[TB Roye]

Did all the stuff everybodys sugessted and as of this morning no more Emails going out. I needed to clean out my contact list as some addresses had change and I had both on the list. A few were no longer with us. Then to top it off Tuesday night and Wednesday Night my ATT Uvese Residential Gateway went down for 3 hours whick left us with not TV, Internet of home phone. Call ATT Wednesday when it went down and they are send a replacement the will be here Saturday. Now problem yesterday as we were gone most of the afternoon an evening and the computers and TV's were of so it didn't generate a lot of heat9mh guess) Today we are conserving as much as possible to make sure we have it up tonight. We actually had to have converstions for couple of evenings how quaint.

Tom