Email spoofs question

I recently opened and responded to an email from a friend that requested I pay a Dr. for his cousin as my friend was out of country. I replied that I was not able to to help.  Now a mutual friend of ours, got same email from my email account.  I deleted all my contacts, should I change my email name? God what  ninghtmare that will be.  I ran Norton Security to look for viruses but nothing there. Ideas anyone. Thanks

I believe my email address was spoofed onto the email my friend got.  THOUGH when I hovered my pointer over the first email I opened, it "looked" just like his email address was sending it. I have run spyware and malware and found nothing. None of the Norton security runs found anything. I am thinking that when I replied they knew that my email was alive. I still am not sure that they did not pull my contacts list though. Not sure how to figure that out. Thanks for all the helps folks. Bill

Was the email message your mutual friend received actually sent from your account as you stated (a copy resides in your Sent folder), or did it simply have your address in the "From" field?  If the latter, your address was probably just spoofed and your email account is secure.  Your friend from which you received the original scam email may be the source of all the email addresses used.

I'm sorry to report that your contact list has been compromised. Either at your mail service server or from your machine. The name change may not be necessary but a password change is mandatory. Are you using a service like Gmail or do you have a mail client on your machine [Thunderbird, or similar]? If you are going to a service I recommend you start using a client. This will filter your messages as they are downloaded and also let Norton take a look at them.

A virus isn't the problem, malware is more likely. I keep both Malwarebytes Antimalware

https://www.malwarebytes.org/products/malwarebytes_free

and super anti spyware on hand as well

http://superantispyware.com/

The free editions do not compromise your Norton security and they expand the reach of your security scans. There is no single security product that can protect you 100% of the time from 100% of the million or so threats released daily.

Stay well and surf safe