Malware from my email
 

Hey Folks
I had 2 people tell me they got emails with malware from my email last night. I have no clue how it happened but don't click on a weird email link from me.

I got it too.

Now I have learned, Unfortunately, a few others too.

+1

Val

Sorry about that Val.. I know there was a string of folks that got it. I honestly have no idea about this stuff so if there is something I should do, to prevent it anymore, if someone will let me know I would appreciate it.

Leon, I've had this happen to me in the past. Not sure if you've done his yet or not. If not, you should immediately change your email address password. And, you should make sure you do not have it set up to automatically remember it (if it was set up that way). I made those changes when I had that issue, and it stopped the emails from going out.

thanks!! I have had my same email 14 yrs so sort of don't want to change too much but if it does happen more I will change the password.

You shouldn't have to change the address itself. I kept mine. Changing the password and password setting was sufficient. Good luck! Such an annoying situation fortunately it's happened to just about everyone at this point.

yes, change your password.

Leon, we all have nights were we just do something stupid. To some it's calling old girl friends, others it's attemtping to sext with your neighbors wife's. For you, we'll its drunk emailing. It's ok man, the first step is always the hardest one... admitting it.




Lol, just kidding. This is somewhat any area of expertise for me. Yeah, I would follow the advice of changing your password, but with something that's hard to discover. So like write out a sentence and combine the words. Use uppercase and lowercase letters, numbers, and at certain points include special characters in the sentence. But befote you change everything i would delete all the emails stored in your junk file and delete all the sent emails you know are not yours. Delete anything your not familiar with and that has any attachments.

Next, NEVER click in any links sent to you by anyone, even the ones trust IF the link is somethjng you dont recogize. Any of the "you gotta see this!" messages should be a clue.

You might also from time to time see emails to your contacts from you. It's not that they've hacked your account again, it's that they're spoofing your email and already had your old contacts. A way to check this is if it happens is by checking your email log on records for locations and dates/times that don't match you. Remember, your phone can connect from an outside server too so don't panick if you see some irregularity as long as you can trace it to your carrier. Also others have tested this by placing a false contact every 7 or so contacts. This keys you know if they're spoofing or not by seeing if they're working off a new or old contact list. Sort of a pain but a way to test it.

Good luck.

It's ok Leon. It happens to most of us from time to time. I had the same thing happen to me yesterday. Some random hookup sites and erectile dysfunction ads apparently got sent out from my account. Mostly just to friends. Some of the responses back were kinda fun to read though. Anyways, the one's that I was afraid of, were the ones that were sent to my union hall...Luckily, those came back as undeliverable...

Simple change of password, and the problem is gone..

Hmmm....Malware

I guess someone was upset with your "54" answer.:eek:

I'm considering printing out and framing the one I received last night and consigning it to the Brockelman & Luckey Auction :D

Best Regards and Happy Collecting :)
Craig

I think I got that email. It indicated "no subject". When you open the email the only thing was a link (sans the x's):

XXXXX_http://www.statik-harter.de/wh.html_xxxx

Email announcing B & L Auction Open
 

Leon,

Got an email announcing that B & L Auction is open. When I clicked on the auction page for B&L I see someone's strange auction.

Patrick

Our auction will open in the 25th of this month. I am strange, our auction, not so much.

Leon, I'm not sure if you use Facebook but there are viruses that float around the Facebook servers and tends to send out emails saved on your computer. They usually use your first or first and last name in the from part of the email but if you hover over the name, usually a odd looking email shows. Either way, everyone should always hover over the "From" name to see the domain its coming from especially if theres an odd link in the email. Changing your pasword with this type of problem does not help since its not really sending it from your email. It's only using your contacts while your email is open.

100% change your password, and everyone should have this on their PC - http://www.malwarebytes.org/products/malwarebytes_free/

i even bought the pay for version its by far the best protection i have ever found.

Email Spoofing
 

Hovering over the "from" email address reveals that it is actually Leon's email address. There were eight "to" email addresses, some I recognized but some I don't. One thing to know about email spoofing is that a worm could have accessed any of our email address books, or someone not even on the distribution but had all of our email addresses in their address book. The worm then sends an email using one of the email addresses in the book as the "from", in this case Leon's email address. It then uses other email addresses from the book to send "to".

The underlying problem with email is that it is still based on old protocols. SMTP (Simple Mail Transfer Protocol) is used to send mail from Port 25 if I remember correctly). It really doesn't offer much in the way of authentication. To receive email from a mail server, POP (Post Office Protocol) is still in use (along with a few newer protocols). I think it is now up to POP3 which has better encryption and uses a username/password to access email accounts.

If it is an email that contains viruses or illegal material, you might be able to get the network provider to backtrack the IP address to the actual sender.

If it is just leads to a phishing site or spam site (which is where this email lead), then just delete it and change your password (you don't need to your username or email service or internet provider!) and you can notify others on the "from" and "to" to change their email passwords, too.

Best Regards,
Craig