My Thunderbird is apparently infected with an email bot that is sending out an unknown number of messages from my Verizon account, dozens of which come back as undeliverable since it is probably generating random email addresses. My HP desktop uses Win 7 pro. I have scanned with Norton, downloaded and run Norton Power Eraser, updated NAV to 2012 and scanned again. However, the emails are still going out. ASome are gibberish. Some claim to be a financial institution warning that a check has not cleared. How do I get rid of this?
Hi benorr,
Your scans don't find any malware because your computer is probably not infected. Unless you are finding the messages in Thunderbird's Sent folder, it is far more likely that either your online Verizon email account has been compromised, or that spammers have obtained your email address and are putting it in the "From" field of the messages they are sending from other accounts. If your contacts are getting spammed, then it is most likely that your account, itself, was hacked and you will need to re-secure it by changing your password and by following the other advice given in the link below. If the spammers are spoofing your address, there isn't really anything you can do about it since they would be sending the messages from accounts that they control and they can easily put any address they want in the sender field. You may just have to wait this out - usually spammers will abandon an address fairly quickly. But, in any case, you do want to secure the account to make sure that, if it was hacked, the spammers cannot regain access.
Good point on it not being malware on the PC but spoofing the address from outside. At any event, after changing PW, it seems to have stopped. Perhaps they moved on to another randomly selected email address. Thanks.
BenO