Gaming Spam mail

[scrtmstr]

So I've got quite a problem. I've got a hotmail account, which I use for MSN and e-mail, and I use windows live mail from WL essentials.
So I woke up this morning, and looked at my inbox on my HTC, and I had 12 emails in my inbox. All from [email protected] or something like that, saying that all sorts of emails hadn't been delivered to people.
It turns out, more then 500 spam emails were send from my account, while I was online. People are getting pissed because of this, and me to. I've already changed my password of my account, run a full virus scan, but still the emails are getting send out, and are almost at a 1000.

So what can I do to stop this? Thanks.

 

[The Catboy]

Gather your contact, delete your account and make a new one.
That's the only thing I can think of.

 

[scrtmstr]

thanks for the quick reply, but that's not going to be an option. I've already tried another account, and WL 2011 doesn't let me for some reason.

Anyway, just ran another scan, and it come up with 23 tracking cookies and a couple of other tracking stuff. Could those be the cause?

 

[Originality]

Tracking cookies are lil files that store things like your browsing history or search preferences. This helps advertisements send you things that you "might" be interested in. It also stores site-specific settings, like the google cookie only tells google that I like to see 100 results per page and to open a new tab when clicking a link. Whilst scans often flag them, they don't usually act on them because they're not that harmful. Likewise, deleting them won't harm the computer at all.

Usually, spam-bots are spread through worms (email worms, although they can also spread through IM worms, trojan/downloaders or USB worms) and sometimes don't get picked up because they're technically not malicious. Anti-malware is more effective at catching it than anti-virus programs. Also they tend to be very hard to catch unless you're in safe-mode. There are also some that won't show up on your computer at all (floating in the email servers) but they're rare, and it's more likely to be something hijacking your browser without you knowing.

Have a read of Rydian's sticky/guide before you continue any further. There's a lot of information there, but it'll help you understand a lil more.

 

[Nimbus]

Normally, I would be a smartass, and tell you to not use Hotmail.

However, if you're hell bent on using it, setup a new account, and set the privacy setting so that only your Friends (and their friends potentially), can see and search for you on hotmail.

....Or you could just use Gmail, never had a spam issue myself with Gmail.

 

[exangel]

You can probably use a GMail account to check your Hotmail account as another IMAP account(?), or forward your Hotmail straight to a GMail address. Not 100% sure about the former as I've not set it up before, but I have three hotmail accounts that I changed to forward all mail to a single account. I am still able to use those addresses for all other Windows Live services.

Spoiler: unreasonably long rant

I've been using GMail since 2004, when it was an invite-only beta service. At first it was mostly because I was escaping the inadequate spam filtration offered by hotmail at the time. I had to use software on top of my email software to filter/destroy the majority of the spam I was receiving. Only a small amount was filtered properly by hotmail back then, usually stuff that was obviously spam with multiple recipients or profane or drug related keywords. Having used my previous email address on the internet for several years, and having had it on web pages or forums for that time, it had been thoroughly crawled and distributed to spammers and marketers so I actually got a lot of spam directed properly to my address and even my real name or names I signed things as, but back then only third party filters had updated and human-verified blacklists for "personalized spam". And I was also irritated by MS's resistance to implementing filters that would prohibit spams from hotmail senders to hotmail recipients.

GMail was pretty much the first freemail provider that made it a point to expand clients' storage periodically so that they could keep complete archives of mail, whether or not they had attachments. That really was the first big sell for me, as archiving with Hotmail back then was more troublesome as accounts were limited to something like 200MB max server side storage. If you had several years of emails including attached pictures or the occasional mp3 you had to archive your mail locally or delete the mails with attachments.
As far as spam filtration goes, I am constantly impressed as a 6 and a half year user of the service. They developed really good phishing filters which are now the vast majority of my daily spam influx but I still get all my genuine accounts/billing related emails. They do this by verifying ownership of the IP address by the domain of origination, so of the 15 emails a day trying to phish my Battle.net and other accounts associated with online games, and occasional fake PayPal or eBay related stuff, and even fake Facebook friend invites, I am pretty confident with my accounts security.
But I have to handle the security of my GMail address with extra attention as it is linked to everything I do financially online as well as having my past love letters and whatnot in the archives.
When it comes to the security of that, I basically use a really long alphanumeric password that I occasionally change, and keep all of my security tools updated with regular full scans done.
I have had friends lose a lot of time and trouble due to keyloggers, and my own mother fell for a phishing scam and lost over 6 thousand dollars with pretty much no recourse because the scammer was in another country and communicated with her by phone after she responded to the email so she had very little evidence for the bank to try to recover the money. She only had four thousand dollars to begin with, so she had to take money out of her 401k at a huge penalty in order to make ends meet.

I don't know what my point has become. But if you are the only person who uses your computer daily, then you have a lot more opportunity to have control over the safety of your email and online identity.

 

[Y05h1]

Get a gmail account, and sign it up for windows live here: http://www.passport.net

 

[FireGrey]

It's worth a try, but delete some emails you don't want (or all) cause there's a small chance it has something to do with an email someone sent you.
It's worth a shot.

 

[CannonFoddr]

Just to check - Are you SURE those Emails sent were actually from you (& your Hotmail Account) ??

I had emails of 'undelivered' a while back, on checking my 'sent' box there was nothing there - so I can only assume some1 had faked my Hotmail address & spammed other people, but undeliverd ones were sent back to me

I admit that a couple of times I had such emails I DID noticed one thing though - friends who complained that they had received emails 'from me' were only the contacts in my Hotmail account (I have 2 'address books' - one on PC in Thunderbird & another one in Hotmail)

So I'm not sure HOW emails were being sent to people in my Hotmail Contacts & yet not get them to show up in 'Sent' box.

To avoid it in future I deleted that particular Hotmail account & got another one (ending in co.uk though) & I never have any contacts in the Hotmail address book either (meaning I have to look them up each time). Since then I've not had any emails like that again

Could it be a Email in the account had SOMEHOW looked @ my Hotmail contacts & passed that info onto some1 else, who then sent spam out ?? I don't know... all I do know is that my PC was clean from Malware/Viruses ...

I used 3-4 different Malware programs, & 4-5 Antivirus (online AND offline) & manually 'deep scanned' the system - & all but one program gave it a clean bill of health (BTW it was 'A-squared free' that was the one that didn't give a clean bill of health - but on checking the file it claimed online with http://virscan.org/ - it was 'clean', so must've been a 'false detect')

 

[prowler]

Seriously, people still use hotmail?
I have two live accounts, one for 'work' type of things (Forward to gmail and filtered to a folder) and my WLM account.
I barely even give out these emails and yet I've got tons of spam.

Use gmail.