How Do I Handle Hacked E-mail Spam?

[goodwood]

Several months ago i got an e-mail from someone i knew and it was some viagra ad. of course since it was from someone i knew, i opened it. then there was the viagra ad.
he sent a message saying that he didn't send it, he didn't know how it happened and apologized.
since then, somehow everyone in my address book is getting the same spam e-mail which i don't send. i have been offline for SIX WEEKS and it still gets sent out.
what the hell is this shit and how can i stop this from happening? is this a virus? any helpful suggestions would be appreciated. thanks!

 

[JF]

This situation is similar to that described in this post - http://www.lpsg.org/192293-puter-problems-white-screen-of.html#post2870104

Sadly, there's little you can do about it other than let your contacts know that you aren't sending such emails and hope the spammers eventually move on to another victim.

 

[idesofmarch]

That was a huge problem some years ago in the company I work for. We all got tenths of these Viagra mails, and penis enlargement mails, and the senders name was sort of disguised. They just kept coming and coming. I put them on the blocked senders list, but even that didn't stop it. The sender name, or the domain was always different. An it doesn' take more, than to change a single letter in the sender name, or the subject line.

 

[B_RedDude]

Goodwood, who is your email provider? I had this problem earlier in the year on my Yahoo account. They just had me change my password. Think they said it was a worm virus.

What kind of virus protection do you have on your computer?

 

[D_Martin van Burden]

Change the password to your e-mail.

 

[dreamer20]

Several months ago i got an e-mail from someone i knew and it was some viagra ad. of course since it was from someone i knew, i opened it. then there was the viagra ad.
he sent a message saying that he didn't send it, he didn't know how it happened and apologized.
since then, somehow everyone in my address book is getting the same spam e-mail which i don't send. i have been offline for SIX WEEKS and it still gets sent out.
what the hell is this shit and how can i stop this from happening? is this a virus? any helpful suggestions would be appreciated. thanks!

I suspect that a person who knows both of your email addresses sent that unsolicited spam. I mentioned the unsolicited spam problem, which I just ignore, here: 12

BTW I had a friend who wanted me to join a site similar to hi5, where the similarity was at one point during profile registration the pseudohi5 site wanted both my email address and password. This supposedly would "make it easier for my friends to contact me" and "the information would be kept confidential". At which point I didn't give my password or register there.

Eventually email spam and email from that site appeared, supposedly from my friend and people I knew not, saying they had a video for me to watch or pics. The links were just pathways leading to the pseudohi5 site and asking me to register again. So I simply deleted any email from that site and I haven't seen any of the latter type of email lately, but I do continue to get spam.

 

[nudeyorker]

Yes each time I get an e-mail from you with no subject I know to immediately delete it. Got one as a matter of fact very early this morning.

 

[Incocknito]

Spam filters may help or if you are a wicked cool Admin you can set up your own filters to discard emails which contain the word viagra for instance.

Of course neither of those ways is infallible. The best action is to get a new email address and be careful who/what sites you give it to.

 

[goodwood]

THANK YOU for the suggestions. i just changed the password to my account. i hope that helps.
as far as virus protection - i've got all different ones.

 

[concupisys]

on a side note (because i get those stupid e-mails all the time), be sure to e-mail the person who sent the spam to you (assuming you know them) and let them know they've been hacked and to change the password to their e-mail account.... if you get another spam message from them after warning them, then 'reply all' to it so everyone on their contact list knows about it....

.... only YOU can prevent spam....

 

[vince]

I had that happen to me about 6 years ago. I let my friend use my computer and he visited some porn sites and all hell broke loose on my email account. I was getting all the spam possible and I was sending spam to my friends. The only way I could deal with it was to close that address down. I went with GMail and haven't had any spam problems. It gets sent to me, but a is very rare that the filters let any into my inbox.