amandah wrote:
Hi Thank-you fro your message. I am using outlook express Each Sunday I run Norton antivirus. Its so embrassing to me as someone out there has hacked into this computer and has sent emails to all my contacts on my list through Hotmail.Is it better to change maybe my hotmail address and password? I am at a loss with how exactly to get round this problem, also I cant afford to spend heaps of money. Calling someone out. Each time I do a norton check I always have various cookies that come up . Regards amandah
The quality of our help, Amandah, depends on the quality of the information you provide us. Already you have been asked a number of questions that we don't have answers to yet.
Some background to help you understand what has happened:
If you are right about your address book being used, then you probably got a specific kind of malware that hijacks your mail program. This infection uses a given number of names (sometimes 10, sometimes 50) and emails them some kind of mail designed to get their attention and convince them to open an attachment or connect on a link that will in turn get them infected in the same way.
Embarrassing as it is, changing your email address makes no difference, because the infection is already there in your computer. Worse, changing your email address may mean you lose some valuable contacts. At this point you need to:
1) clean up your computer and/or
2) change your email account password in case they have gotten into your account instead of your computer.
3) email those contacts of yours who got the infected email and explain what happened and apologize; and
4) tell them what they need to do if they caught the infection.
So to get this started, we volunteers here need some good information from you.
1) how do you know this happened? There are other forms of malware out there that don't touch your computer. Instead, they make up millions of email addresses, hoping to hit ones that actually exist, then send out email under that false name (using something we call "counterfeit headers"). To all appearances, the email appears to come from you. The way you tell the difference is that the recipients of counterfeit headers could be anyone, in your address book or not; whereas the recipients of an Outlook Hijacker for instance would be only or predominantly those people who are in your address book.
2) I doubt if your version of Outlook makes any difference, but it might to some of our crew; so tell us if it is Outlook Express 6 or 7 or whatever; or if it's MS Office Outlook 2002 or 2003 or 2007 or ...
3) What security product do you have on your computer. This is helpful to us, because we need to know how this malware slipped through the cracks. Do you have NAV or NIS or 360 (Norton Antivirus or Norton Internet Security or Norton 360)? What is its version number? Open up the main screen of the product, then click on Help&Support, then click on About. Copy the version number shown and tell us what it is.
4) We need to know if your signature files on up-to-date. These are the first line of defense in recognizing and blocking malware. This will be actually told to you in the main screen of NAV or NIS. Your LIVE UPDATES should never be more than 10 or 15 minutes old.
5) We need to know if you are getting any warnings on your own computer at all. What is the current behavior.
There are going to be a number of suggestions coming at you real fast. Some will tell you download malwarebytes, others might mention hijackthis. Please follow the links and instructions provided for both because it will help move things along.
At the moment, your job is to get us the information we need. Hope to see you posting back here soon.
Message Edited by mijcar on 11-21-2009 08:50 AM