Solve : Virus? Spyware? Hack? Web based mail; a few questions.?

1.	Solve : Virus? Spyware? Hack? Web based mail; a few questions.?
Answer» Hello, If this question does not belong in this section, I greatly apologize. Not only am I new here but I'm also not very smart with computers. I have common sense and sometimes that works. My question CONCERNS a web based email issue. Let me explain. Today, my husband opened up his email ACCOUNT and noticed I had sent some spam to him. Instead of the "from" being "First name Last name", it was my email address. He showed me and I thought it was spoofing; they had taken only the name of my email and used that. However, the more I looked into it (searching around the internet), many people said that since the spam was being sent to people in my contacts (5 addresses I'd used the most recent), it was more sinister than spoofing. It was a virus, a worm or hacked. There was no sign of the messages being sent in my Outlook program. They were found in the Drafts of the web version of my email. I thought I would look there just in case on a hunch and there they were. However, even in my drafts, the sender was listed as "Unknown" and the subjects of the mail was "Unknown" too. I did a virus, spyware and malware scan. Nothing showed up. My anti virus and firewall are always updated automatically. I never click on links or open spam. I would have had no idea about the happenings of my web mail account since everything in my Outlook seemed fine! I asked a tech support rep from my internet/email company that since the issue (sending of mails) was only found on the web based version of the email and not Outlook, does that mean the virus/issue is only with the web based email? He said yes. I'm going to ask for your advice: is this true? According to my husband's inbox, the mails were sent between nine days. Only 4 messages but spread out between these days. Yesterday was the last one and today, there hasn't been a thing. But I've also locked everything up and changed passwords. Should that be the solution? Is there anything else I can do? I don't know if this has anything to do with it but my husband shares the computer. He's from Belarus so he's always reading Russian sites and visiting Russian places. Is it possible something from these places snuck in and caused the virus? (if it is one) I know it is a dumb question but all I ever hear is about Russian spam and Russian viruses! This was my good and professional email. Like I said, I took good care of it and it ended up spamming professional contacts. This really shook me up today. The thought of that account hacked upsets me. I figure I cannot be the only one... but it sure feels this way. I apologize for rambling and not making sense. Again, I apologize if this does not belong here. If anyone has any information, please let me know. I would appreciated it!Run a scan with something like Malware Bytes; Go through the instructions posted here. A malware expert should help you clean your machine. Afterwards, Change every single password on any important site, particularly your E-mail address password... which you already changed. However, if any of the scans bring back something, you should change it again. Quote does that mean the virus/issue is only with the web based email? He said yes. I'm going to ask for your advice: is this true? Not at all. Assuming we are talking about the same E-mail account. There are several ways a person get's access to your E-mail. The most prevalent is that a Trojan horse download or other malware gets onto your system and can easily "watch" as you type your address and password, and sends all that data back to the person CONTROLLING that piece of malware, who now has all the required information in order to get into your account. At which point they can use that as a jumping off point- reset passwords for things like paypal, bank websites, and so forth, and essentially usurp control. In this case it seems that the purpose was simply to send out spam mail, though. The second way is if you use the same password for multiple purposes. As an example, a number of years ago now, I used a password for a few different sites, including this one, at one point in time; However, one of the sites with that password was attacked and had user passwords leaked to the web. As a result, one could easily get my password and try to find accounts with the same username elsewhere; I happened to be using that password for my E-Mail and it was just @hotmail.com so it didn't take long for them to get into there. Thankfully, I have some very old, invalid contacts that failed to DELIVER and got sent back to me which were evident spam. So I changed the password. I managed to suffer very little damage from this thankfully, because I managed to change it so quickly. Now I use a different randomly generated password for every single thing that requires a password, and keep those password listings in a safe place. To best illustrate how quickly they move sometimes, it wasn't more than a few hours after the passwords were leaked that my web hosting account was locked out on my Control panel, due to a "hacking attempt". If I had used the same password, I don't want to imagine what would have happened to my site content :/ Thankfully This was because even then I didn't use the same password for absolutely everything; and that one was randomly generated, though I did have to talk to somebody with my webhost to get it RESOLVED so I could get access to it again. So, it comes down to that- either you had malware at some point in time, or, if you use that same password in multiple places, there might have been a leak at any of the places where you used that password. (Ideally, they wouldn't even have the actual password if done properly, but unfortunately a lot of sites still do... and they get compromised). As I said, my method to attempt to mitigate any possibility of this happening to me was to simply start using completely different, strong passwords for everything that requires one.Thank you BC_Programmer for your response. I have Malware Bytes on this computer and I ran a scan. It came back clear. I read the information on the link you provided me. Is it suggested I also download those programs? Is it safe to do so? Will they find something Malware Bytes has missed? I am guilty of the multiple password problem I must say. I knew it was a bad thing to do. I am hoping this is the issue that led me into this problem and nothing that will come back to bite me. I'm so worried at this point I cannot think straight. Sorry for the bad English too. I wish I could explain myself better and was more computer literate like you come across. You should run all the scans suggested and post the logs. We will take a look at them and determine if your computer is compromised.

Answer»

Hello,

If this question does not belong in this section, I greatly apologize. Not only am I new here but I'm also not very smart with computers. I have common sense and sometimes that works.

My question CONCERNS a web based email issue. Let me explain.

Today, my husband opened up his email ACCOUNT and noticed I had sent some spam to him. Instead of the "from" being "First name Last name", it was my email address. He showed me and I thought it was spoofing; they had taken only the name of my email and used that. However, the more I looked into it (searching around the internet), many people said that since the spam was being sent to people in my contacts (5 addresses I'd used the most recent), it was more sinister than spoofing. It was a virus, a worm or hacked. There was no sign of the messages being sent in my Outlook program. They were found in the Drafts of the web version of my email. I thought I would look there just in case on a hunch and there they were. However, even in my drafts, the sender was listed as "Unknown" and the subjects of the mail was "Unknown" too.

I did a virus, spyware and malware scan. Nothing showed up. My anti virus and firewall are always updated automatically. I never click on links or open spam. I would have had no idea about the happenings of my web mail account since everything in my Outlook seemed fine!

I asked a tech support rep from my internet/email company that since the issue (sending of mails) was only found on the web based version of the email and not Outlook, does that mean the virus/issue is only with the web based email? He said yes. I'm going to ask for your advice: is this true?

According to my husband's inbox, the mails were sent between nine days. Only 4 messages but spread out between these days. Yesterday was the last one and today, there hasn't been a thing. But I've also locked everything up and changed passwords. Should that be the solution? Is there anything else I can do?

I don't know if this has anything to do with it but my husband shares the computer. He's from Belarus so he's always reading Russian sites and visiting Russian places. Is it possible something from these places snuck in and caused the virus? (if it is one) I know it is a dumb question but all I ever hear is about Russian spam and Russian viruses!

This was my good and professional email. Like I said, I took good care of it and it ended up spamming professional contacts. This really shook me up today. The thought of that account hacked upsets me. I figure I cannot be the only one... but it sure feels this way.

I apologize for rambling and not making sense. Again, I apologize if this does not belong here. If anyone has any information, please let me know. I would appreciated it!Run a scan with something like Malware Bytes; Go through the instructions posted here. A malware expert should help you clean your machine. Afterwards, Change every single password on any important site, particularly your E-mail address password... which you already changed. However, if any of the scans bring back something, you should change it again.

Quote

does that mean the virus/issue is only with the web based email? He said yes. I'm going to ask for your advice: is this true?

Not at all. Assuming we are talking about the same E-mail account.

There are several ways a person get's access to your E-mail. The most prevalent is that a Trojan horse download or other malware gets onto your system and can easily "watch" as you type your address and password, and sends all that data back to the person CONTROLLING that piece of malware, who now has all the required information in order to get into your account. At which point they can use that as a jumping off point- reset passwords for things like paypal, bank websites, and so forth, and essentially usurp control. In this case it seems that the purpose was simply to send out spam mail, though.

The second way is if you use the same password for multiple purposes. As an example, a number of years ago now, I used a password for a few different sites, including this one, at one point in time; However, one of the sites with that password was attacked and had user passwords leaked to the web. As a result, one could easily get my password and try to find accounts with the same username elsewhere; I happened to be using that password for my E-Mail and it was just @hotmail.com so it didn't take long for them to get into there. Thankfully, I have some very old, invalid contacts that failed to DELIVER and got sent back to me which were evident spam. So I changed the password.

I managed to suffer very little damage from this thankfully, because I managed to change it so quickly. Now I use a different randomly generated password for every single thing that requires a password, and keep those password listings in a safe place.

To best illustrate how quickly they move sometimes, it wasn't more than a few hours after the passwords were leaked that my web hosting account was locked out on my Control panel, due to a "hacking attempt". If I had used the same password, I don't want to imagine what would have happened to my site content :/ Thankfully This was because even then I didn't use the same password for absolutely everything; and that one was randomly generated, though I did have to talk to somebody with my webhost to get it RESOLVED so I could get access to it again.

So, it comes down to that- either you had malware at some point in time, or, if you use that same password in multiple places, there might have been a leak at any of the places where you used that password. (Ideally, they wouldn't even have the actual password if done properly, but unfortunately a lot of sites still do... and they get compromised).

As I said, my method to attempt to mitigate any possibility of this happening to me was to simply start using completely different, strong passwords for everything that requires one.Thank you BC_Programmer for your response.

I have Malware Bytes on this computer and I ran a scan. It came back clear. I read the information on the link you provided me. Is it suggested I also download those programs? Is it safe to do so? Will they find something Malware Bytes has missed?

I am guilty of the multiple password problem I must say. I knew it was a bad thing to do. I am hoping this is the issue that led me into this problem and nothing that will come back to bite me.

I'm so worried at this point I cannot think straight. Sorry for the bad English too. I wish I could explain myself better and was more computer literate like you come across.

You should run all the scans suggested and post the logs. We will take a look at them and determine if your computer is compromised.

Solve : Virus? Spyware? Hack? Web based mail; a few questions.?

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