SPAM sent to all my contacts from me.
by Big Steve / October 22, 2011 4:53 AM PDT.
I found out this morning that almost all of my contacts in my Yahoo email received an email claiming to have been sent from me but it wasn’t, the email was from some Canadian pharmacy advertising sex drugs. Should I send an email to each one of my contacts telling them if they did get this email to ignore it because I didn’t send it? How could this have happened?
Discussion is locked.
All Answers.
and there really is no easy answer.
I did change my password but not my email address and you are right, I did receive one of the emails and it looked like I had sent it to myself. Yahoo Mail issued a bulletin saying they were working on the problem but if it happens again I’ll close my Yahoo email account. That password of yours, you write them all down in a notebook then refer to your notebook when you need the password? There is no way I would remember such a password. Do you store them on your computer under “MY DOCUMENTS” and label the document “MY PASSWORDS”?
We all use what works best for us. My written record is a backup in case I lose the OS for any reason, I have backups of my password file itself, but the paper one is the definitive, as it were. No I never refer to it except to add or change passwords. The paper record is kept in a secure place under lock and key.
Man, how long did it take you to type out that post? I thought I was long winded but to answer some of your questions when the incident happened Yahoo posted a memo similar to Twitter when Twitter is having problems. I only have about 15 contacts in my Yahoo email but a few are business types and I did not like it when it appeared to me they received emails from a Canadian pharmacy advertising sex drugs.
I’ll keep them short from now on.
I guess I use a web browser. I was using IE8, switched to IE9 now I’m using Google Chrome. Why I use web based email is this, this laptop which I currently use was purchased for me to use by my brother who lives in another state and any day now he might decide to ask for it back and if he does I don’t want him to be able to read any of my emails stored on this, his laptop computer, that’s why I use Yahoo Email, Gmail and AT&T Webmail, all require login and password information. I have not activated whatever is on this computer which took the place of Outlook Express which is on my older computer which once he or some of his lieutenants got their hands on that other computer they could immediately open up and read all of my emails.
My desktop crashed on me two months ago and thank God I printed out all my usernames and passwords before this happened. After getting another desktop computer, I scanned the list and saved it into excel and password protected it. Whew!
and as you say, backing up your passwords is absolutely necessary.
I have place that file on a usb thumb drive that is a Sauza Hornitos bottle shaped thumb drive.
Canadian Viagra I bet. My cousin, another cousin using a work computer, a third cousin, and 3 friends have had the same thing happen to them. I’ve received the same email from them all(not really them) for a total of 6 times. Each time I received the email, I notified them about it. Each of the 6 contacted their ISP’s, and email providers, and none of them were able to fix the problem. The only way they all could resolve the problem was to make a new email address for themselves.
The 1 that has, has had the same thing happen to her twice in the past year, but they were not the Canadian pharmacy selling Viagra type of emails being sent out from her computer. Now they are for “I’ve made so much money on this, that I want to share this with you!” and there is always a link in the email to click on. but us wise ones no better 😎
When fwding an email, erase the fwd or fwds on subject line next erase the email address of the person who sent it 2 u then enable bcc & use it instead of to line. Your mail will then b sent as undisclosed recipents,also if u have Avast A/V set mail shield to scan both inbound & outbound mail ALL expert settings should b set on high in Shields.
The spam either came from your account, in which case your account or PC has been compromised, or it was spoofed to look like your account.
And well set out. Thank you.
The site uses javascript to parse the string so all processing is done locally and nothing is sent over the Internet. The javascript file it uses is https://www.microsoft.com/security/pc-security/assets/scripts/passwdcheck.js, but that may get stripped out of this forum. Basically, a password seems to get bonus points for variety of characters, length, and avoiding common password strings.
This afternoon my AT&T webmail account got hit, I opened it up to find almost 40 “failure to deliver” email notices where it was made to appear that I had sent these 40 contacts an email from a Canadian pharmacy pushing male enhancement drugs, the same pharmacy that hit my Yahoo account earlier.
Late this afternoon I did as you recommended, I contacted AT&T’s DSL tech support and changed my email password to a much stronger one. The tech support guy for AT&T told me they would monitor my account through their servers to determine where these emails were coming from and block them if they try doing it again. AT&T did not recommend storing my passwords on my computer, since I’m the only one in the house, AT&T told me to write them down in a notebook and store them in my desk drawer instead.
As long as you have malware and spy software on your computer, changing passwords is a waste of time. Get software and install it to remove these hostile programs. How did you get the stuff? Did you open an attachment in your email? Did you go to a website that could have compromised you? Did you download anything from such a site including music? I lived through this problem as well.
What did you say? Clean out what? I have this installed on my computer, one of which isn’t working that good, Avast AV. I also have SAS and Malwarebytes. I haven’t been able to do a thorough scan or even a quick scan with Avast AV in months. When I start my Avast scans I come back 3 hours later and it says only 6% has been scanned so I abort those scans. I’m thinking about switching to a different AV.
Clicking on a link from a friend’s facebook page is going to get your computer in trouble. Also, without your knowledge, porn sites have trojan worms that can go undetected by Avast AV planted by unscrupulous people onto those sites. Your problem is not software but poor decisions on what you open up and sites you visit. I had this same problem 5 years ago which crashed my PC running windows 2000.
SPAM sent to all my contacts from me – Forums
