Email Hacked or Hijacked - Public WIFI problem ?

[horusd]

I discovered one of my email accounts was sending messages not from me with a link, presumably a dodgey one , to people in the contact list. There was no record in the "Sent" folder, only failed delivery notices.

I recently had discovered a trojan and had removed it. Could this be the source? I recently downloaded lastpass and had it change all passwords, just to be sure. I also use adaware, Zonealarm and Malwarebytes to prevent these attacks, so I'm at a bit of a loss as to how this happened. I'm very careful online. The only thing I can think of that might have caused this problem is that I was using WIFI in public areas a few times, and I certainly did login to email. From reading online, this can be dangerous. Is there a way to protect yourself using public WIFI or am I completely off -track on what the problem could be?

 

[monagt]

Check that your incoming emails are not being forwarded on to another account

 

[Jim2007]

I discovered one of my email accounts was sending messages not from me with a link, presumably a dodgey one , to people in the contact list. There was no record in the "Sent" folder, only failed delivery notices.

I recently had discovered a trojan and had removed it. Could this be the source? I recently downloaded lastpass and had it change all passwords, just to be sure. I also use adaware, Zonealarm and Malwarebytes to prevent these attacks, so I'm at a bit of a loss as to how this happened. I'm very careful online. The only thing I can think of that might have caused this problem is that I was using WIFI in public areas a few times, and I certainly did login to email. From reading online, this can be dangerous. Is there a way to protect yourself using public WIFI or am I completely off -track on what the problem could be?

It does not have to have anything to do with you... an half decent IT person with access to a mail server can do this kind of thing. They don't even have to know about you email account to do it. They simply set up a program to match family names with first names in various combinations and marry it to a well known mail service, then use their server to send it off as if it came from say GMail or whoever. There really is nothing you can do about it.

On the receiving side, you need to make sure that the mail you receive has come from a valid source. I use an in house program to warning me of this kind of threat, so I can recommend a commercial option. Perhaps your mail client already offers such an option or someone can recommend a commercial alternative for you, if you have not already got something like this.

Jim

 

[thedaras]

I discovered one of my email accounts was sending messages not from me with a link, presumably a dodgey one , to people in the contact list. There was no record in the "Sent" folder, only failed delivery notices.

I recently had discovered a trojan and had removed it. Could this be the source? I recently downloaded lastpass and had it change all passwords, just to be sure. I also use adaware, Zonealarm and Malwarebytes to prevent these attacks, so I'm at a bit of a loss as to how this happened. I'm very careful online. The only thing I can think of that might have caused this problem is that I was using WIFI in public areas a few times, and I certainly did login to email. From reading online, this can be dangerous. Is there a way to protect yourself using public WIFI or am I completely off -track on what the problem could be?

Hi, the same thing just happened to me..

I have a Hotmail account and have had it for ten years.Then I got about 50 of the "failed delivery" notices..

It was impossible to contact Hotmail, so I opened up a new gmail account and imported my contacts..I ended up closing the hotmail account.

It was horrible to have it happen as the emails that were "sent" from my hotmail account were very unpleasant and needless to say all the schools etc will have received them,its very embarrassing.

 

[horusd]

Thanks Jim, Monagt the Daras, I wondered how they could access my contacts list? And my name isn't an obvious one . I can only conclude that someone hacked into the account somehow, and maybe thro public WIFI. I've gone and changed passwords using the lastpass, to something realy obscure.

Yet even so I see a delivery failure notice again on my email today? I really don't want to give up this account as I like it, but it might come to that if I can't figure out how to stop this.

PS: My incoming mail seems fine monagt, at least as far as I can tell.

 

[jpd]

When you receive an e-mail from joe.blog@somewhere.whatever there is no way of knowing if the e-mail was sent by joe.blog or not.

The sender's address is not authenticated in any way at all, normally. There are attempts to add more security to e-mail messaging but it is not given a high priority by most ISPs