Evidently, someone has hacked into my hotmail account. They sent an e-mail to everyone on my contact list advertising laptop computers. I PROMISE YOU THAT I DID NOT SEND THAT E-MAIL!!!
I've changed the password, but do I need to do more? Should I delete the entire account and start over? I could use your advice, if you're a computer geek.
I'm not a geek but I play one on television.
ReplyDeleteActually, I know a couple of geeks. Let me see if I can get them to come help ya.
btw..I'm way hurt! I didn't get one of those emails!
heh
Mick
Hotmail is not a secure email system. It never has been. For proof...
ReplyDeleteWindows Live Hotmail “CAPTCHA” security compromised
and...
Huge Hotmail security flaw reported
My advice is, you've already done all you can by changing the password. Make your password scary hard to figure out. Combination of capital letters, numbers, etc. ie.
Qp2Kl7v3 - I like that one.
L1ag5x9Qh7s - is even better.
No email is truly secure, even with encryption the government can (and DOES) read them, but good password discipline is the best way to keep your email secure from the idiot hackers and spammers that infest the net.
I would like to help, but there are quite a few questions I have to ask in order to come up with a good plan on how to deal with this.
ReplyDelete1. Do you use outlook/outlook express to access your mail if so what version or do you use the hotmail website
2. Does the email that went out show up in your sent items
3. Can we arrange a way for me to get a copy of this email so I can take a look at it?
4. What antivirus if any are you running and version
5. What version of windows are you running and are all patches up to date
Sorry to dump all of this as a comment, but I was asked as a favor by a mutual friend to lend a helping hand, so here I am. :-)
If you changed the password you should be fine as far as hotmail is concerned, but I'd be concerned about your local host, because usually the way they hack into your hotmail account is to compromise your local host and use your local cookies to get to your hotmail without a password. Please run your virus scanner *now*, and consider switching virus scanners if you are using Norton Antivirus (which should be more properly called the "giving access to hackers pro-virus").
ReplyDelete- Badtux the Geeky Penguin
Changing your password is good enough, but you need to find out how they got your password.
ReplyDeleteDoes anyone else know your password?
Was your password relatively simple? If so make it more complex. Programs out there can guess passwords.
Is the password you used for your hotmail the only place you use it? If so then you hotmail's service isn't up to snuff. If you use the same passowrds to log into hotmail as you do other places, like blogger or something, then not only do you need to change those, but those services should have been compromised.
Find the leak. Make your passwords really complex, 8 characters, upper case, lower case, numbers in differnt spots, and non-alpha, non-number characters, like #*!$, stuff like that.
Download spybot ( http://www.safer-networking.org/en/download/index.html ) and make sure you don't have a key-logger or something like that running.
ReplyDelete