spammers hacked email - help!

[LidlPrincess]

It appears I have been hacked by spammers and my email address is sending out stuff in my name (I know this cause I keep getting mailer Daemon bouce back messages and the odd out of office reply)

I have tried to change my password but everytime I click on the link to change passwordon myAOL account I get a "diagnose Connection problems" page yet I can surf eveything else no problem.

SO, short of ringing up AOL (always my last choice of things to do!!) is there anything I can do?

Also, how the hell have spammers got into my email account? Do they know my password? And if so - how did they get it?!

Any help would be most appreciated!

BUMPING :)

That happened to me recently too. I ran spyware etc then was able to change password. I think my problem had something to do with Facebook as some of my friends had the exact same spammer.

Worrying thing was that some people responded to me asking me what I thought of the new IPad and was it worth buying from the (dodgy) site?!

Change your email password anyway....

Presuming that you're on a Windows PC is your anti-virus up to date? Do you have a malware scanner such as Malwarebytes? If not download and run the free version from here:
www.malwarebytes.org/products/malwarebytes_free

However this isn't necessarily an indication that your email has been hacked. It's incredibly easy to fake who an email is from, there's absolutely no security on it and no guarantee that an email is from who it says it is. If you gave me your email in 30 seconds or so I could get an email to you that would appear to have been sent by yourself to a casual observer.

So it might be Facebook related, if someone is a "friend" on Facebook or your profiles are set to public spammers can go through and gather up your email addresses and then send out a fake email to everybody that appears to come from you.

Or those chain emails, you know "send this to everyone you know and you'll be happy/win a million dollars/help fight cancer/etc/etc" can provide spammers with a ready made list of email addresses.

Or someone else you know might have had their email hacked.

So take all precautions in case your email has been hacked, but given how easy it is just to spoof emails hackers often don't bother and just fake the things.

Thannks kaumana and BadgersPaws - so if someone is faking that stuff is from me you get the bounce back emails and out of office replies? Blardy hell.

I have managed to totally lock myself out of said email account now by changing password then forgetting it before I wrote it down so have opened a new one

harrumph!

So is the moral of te story to guard your email as much as poss?? But I guess its practically impossible to stop people finding it!

"so if someone is faking that stuff is from me you get the bounce back emails and out of office replies?"

Yes, the email says that it's from you, so you'll get the replies.

"So is the moral of te story to guard your email as much as poss?"

Yes, never enter your email on any site that will show it on the internet. For example don't enter it on a forum here. Also don't reply to those email chain letter type of things, they're usually always a fake.

There's plenty of other precautions you can take but doing that is usually enough and it's all that I do. I've got an email address that I use all over the internet to log into many different sites (non for anything special such as banking, all forums and the like) and I don't get any spam emails despite my email being several years old.

The only way I know to handle this kind of thing is to have several email accounts. One might be for important business stuff like your bank and would never be seen by outsiders. One would be for general use and one throwaway account for competitions and other places where you know it's going to be displayed for all to see.

That avoids your bank or your work getting emails about viagra and porn that appear to be from your account.

I do the same as BadgersPaws re having different email accounts.

However, my spammer did manage to access my email addresses which I am sure raised a few eyebrows from people not expecting to hear from me ever again!

It's a nightmare - the email they have got is the main one I've used for years and years and god knows how many things its registered with and since I've now locked myself out of it I need to try and remember all theimportant ones and change it. I think you are right about having lots though. Am going to do that from now on I think!

Thanks all!

"I do the same as BadgersPaws re having different email accounts."

"I think you are right about having lots though."

Sorry I should clarify, I don't do that, I have one main personal email account for all of my internet doings.

However through being careful that email address isn't subject to spamming and it's got to be about four or five years old now.

You can have difference email addresses for different things, and that will be very safe. However you achieve pretty much the same results by being careful.

A very quick (and not close to 100% reliable) test is to try googling for your email address, if anything comes up you need to change it.