My sister received an email from my hotmail account that I never personaly sent. Should I be worried?
Yes.
It’s possible, …
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The email was spoofed, meaning it really never came from your account.
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Someone has access to your account and is sending out emails.
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Someone has broken into Hotmail (again!) and sending out emails using other people’s accounts.
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Someone has installed a program on your computer to capture all of your keystrokes, obtain your password(s) and go from there.
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I’m sure there are other possibilities but I cannot think of any at the moment.
You should immediately go to a clean computer (meaning not in an Internet Cafe, at school, work, etc.) – preferably your own computer under your sole control and, … -
Change the password to the account. Despite what friends and whiney siblings may beg, never give your password to anyone else under any circumstances. Period. No exceptions. If you don’t follow this to the letter, all the time, you shouldn’t have an email account, let alone an ATM card, etc.
(No offense, but I used to run across this quite a bit in my helpdesk days. A password in never to be shared with anyone and no sys admin will ask you for it.) -
Now clean out the browser cache to eliminate any evidence you just accessed your account. Kill the history, too. Then empty the recycle bin.
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Wait a few days and try to access your account from the same machine.
Tell us what happens next.
What you need to do is to look at the complete header of the message. If you use Eudora push the “Blah, blah” button does that.
It will show you where the e-mail message came from. If you don’t know how to read it you can copy and paste it here.
The same thing happened to me recently. Soemone sent a mail that I had “supposedly” written to me SO and said that I was cheating and all sorts of lies. It is quite a disturbing thing.
But if whoever it was got the password before, surely they will get it again? Would you be better shutting down your account (if it’s something like hotmail)?
If you paste the headers here we could try and have a look at them, see if it’s really send from hotmail or just a fake.
Chances are it was sent by someone who had the Klez virus and also happened to have your hotmail address and your sister’s email address on their computer, that’s all. Delete it and move on.
Exactly what kind of e-mail was it? Typical “Larger Breasts in 2 days!” spam type? Or something more personal? Any attachments? Just recently I got an e-mail that at first glance appeared to be from…myself. It was a typical crap spam. All they do is spoof the header so it appears to be from a different addy it is. You can go in and check where it really came from usually without any problems.
1- Make sure your computer is secure (firewall, no virus, trojans, secure passwords, etc)
2- Use Encryption and/or digital signatures in your emails.
Just with these simple precautions you will be safer than you need
Recently, a virus has been passing around my circle of friends, family, and business associates. One of us will get it (never me, I have a Mac!) and it will mail itself around to everyone else. Amazingly, it will pick a subject from another email. Then, you get an email from a familiar address with a plausible subject. I even have gotten email viruses from people who do not have my address. Someone they know has my address and the virus links us together, gives the mail a likely subject, and sends it on its way.
People who create these viruses must be gifted programmers. Have they nothing better to do with their time and efforts?
this is the email my sister sent back to me. i’ll see if i can get her to send me a copy of the full headers if she has not deleated it all ready (i’m the one who put the x in here email address).
From :
“Luciana” <xxxxxxx@hotmail.com>
To :
ace_inc@hotmail.com
Subject :
Re: So cool a flash,enjoy it
Date :
Wed, 28 Aug 2002 20:08:33 -0700
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Originating-IP: [205.188.208.72]
Received: from 205.188.208.72 by lw10fd.law10.hotmail.msn.com with HTTP;Thu, 29 Aug 2002 03:08:33 GMT
Reply Reply All Forward Delete Put in Folder…InboxSent MessagesDraftsTrash Can Printer Friendly Version
whatever this was it didn’t send right so try again if it is important
----Original Message Follows----
From: ace_inc <ace_inc@hotmail.com>
To: xxxxxxxx@hotmail.com
Subject: So cool a flash,enjoy it
Date: Mon, 19 Aug 2002 08:35:41 -0500 (CDT)
<< multipart1 >>
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That’s Klez. Anything with “so cool a flash” or “VS Japanese Playboy” or any number of odd subject headings is probably this virus. Was there an attachment? Don’t open it.
From :
"Luciana " <xxxxxx@hotmail.com>
To :
xxxxxx@hotmail.com, xxxxxxx@hotmail.com, xxxxxx@aol.com, xxxxxx@iconn.net, xxxxxxx@hotmail.com, xxxxxxx@aol.com, xxxxxx@hotmail.com, xxxxxxx@hotmail.com, ace_inc@hotmail.com
Subject :
Fwd: I couldn’t resist!
Date :
Tue, 03 Sep 2002 10:57:26 -0700
MIME-Version: 1.0
X-Originating-IP: [198.26.118.37]
Received: from 198.26.118.37 by lw10fd.law10.hotmail.msn.com with HTTP;Tue, 03 Sep 2002 17:57:26 GMT
Reply Reply All Forward Delete Put in Folder…InboxSent MessagesDraftsTrash Can Printer Friendly Version
i received this email from my same sister. she has no idea what it is or who sent it. the other email addresses that i X out she has no idea who they are eather. what should we do? i have an anti-virus program that i update everyother day. is this enough?
Yup. Depending on the antivirus program, you should be perfectly fine. A firewall will strip the virus from the email. If there was no attachment, you’re fine; if there was one, but you didn’t open it, you’re fine. Delete the email and get on with your life.
Klez can be deleted using information at this link.