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Please Help! My email has been hacked.

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1. Immediately change your password. It is possible someone has your password especially if it is easy to guess.

 

From your current description and what you posted I think someone is spamming and setting your email address as the reply-to email. Meaning any automatic replies to the message would end up in your account.

 

Explanation: Emails have 3 addresses: To a recipient, From a sender and where Reply should go. By default From and Reply are the same. It is trivial to have a different From and Reply address.

 

2. Setup a filter to move all emails to adultclassified into the Spam folder.

 

In Yahoo Mail, select

 

Mail Options/Filters/Add Filter/recipient contains/adultclassified

 

Move to Folder: Spam

 

This should help keep things sane.

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It sounds like it may also be a chain mail malware you've uploaded. That is, the original message may have been waiting for you to click on it then add your account to it's growing list, and is now using your account to spread (likely an automated hack). I would take your computer offline and run your anti-virus software while it is protected from the net and remove anything if you find it as you may have some kind of virus. If it is only your e-mail that is compromised, try resetting through you e-mail proider (I know you are waiting for a response), and if not, the best bet would be to cut and run and start up a new e-mail. Once it's been hacked, unless you really need it to stay the same, it is a fairly difficult process to regain control. Sorry for the problems and I hope you can get it fixed.

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Thanks for the info! I will do as suggested right away and hope I get it fixed/deleted and I pray I don't have a virus. They are comming in my spam folder as well. Ccleaner never finds anything amiss and norton hasn't let me down in five years, but there's a first time for everything. Hopefully it is contained to email only. I recall seeing a feature in Yahoo mail options long ago, a section where you could block a certin amount of addresses, but can't find it anymore. Wondering if anyone knows if this is still an option and where to find that option? (until I'm able to delete the address) I am not using Yahoo anymore, it's been too much hassle. What would you guys/gals suggest for my email provider? (I don't want to use my windows mail for work) I've heard gmail is good. Are they all the same or...

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If I were you, I'd do as you tried.....and then walk away from that addy and provider for awhile. Try gmail.....dedicate the addy only for work and keep it cleaned out. Gmail has worked well for me and I do have to keep this part of my life hidden. You'll get lots of spam wherever you set up simply because of the sites we visit, but gmail is very good at filtering them out.....just don't answer them. When you set up your contact list, make sure I'm at the top, lol. Good luck!

 

Edit.........get a crackerjack password, as well!

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If you have a virus and don't mind doing it, you can reformat your computer. That will definitely get rid of everything.

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If you have a virus and don't mind doing it, you can reformat your computer. That will definitely get rid of everything.

 

A boot sector virus can survive a reformat.

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Ok so no virus on my pc. I did not want to reformat DrLove since my burner won't work anymore and I'm out of memory sticks lol but not to worry, it seems to be contained to my email and my address isn't listed to the recipients. I have changed my password and changed everything to say "this email has been hacked" for my name, city, ect.

then I signed up for gmail as suggested. :) I won't open that yahoo addy again and my account should be automaticly deleted in 90 days. Not much fun. I must have opened an email I shouldn't have. It was just used for 'work' so not that big of a deal. It does seem like my mail was being used as some type of spam-what etasman2000 said. Thanks for all your help guys, this tech section on CERB is faster and more helpful than google search! :) Much appreciated!

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I like gmail, I never get any spam whatsoever.

 

This incident you mention above, you are not the first one to have that email show up that many times. I think the suggestion was whatever you do, do not go to that site to enter any information to get yourself taken off of it. Its my belief that it is sent out via ads placed somewhere, but they don't have your real email, then they do have it when you click the link and provide the email address you want removed.

 

It looks like the site itself doesn't work or might have been hacked itself, then mass emails sent out via the site?

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....Ccleaner never finds anything amiss and norton hasn't let me down in five years, but there's a first time for everything. Hopefully it is contained to email only. ..

 

For cleaning malware from a PC, in contrast to viruses, I would recommend the free download from antimalwarebytes. It covers a different class of problems than viruses.

 

I haven't got the link anymore as I have migrated back to Macs these last few years.

 

CB

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For cleaning malware from a PC, in contrast to viruses, I would recommend the free download from antimalwarebytes. It covers a different class of problems than viruses.

 

I haven't got the link anymore as I have migrated back to Macs these last few years.

 

CB

 

Excellent suggestion, CB. The actual name is Malwarebytes and you can download it from download.cnet.com (a great site for finding everything you can think of regarding software). For this software, the link is http://download.cnet.com/Malwarebytes-Anti-Malware/3000-8022_4-10804572.html?tag=mncol;1

 

I am running AVG on one machine and Norton on my new laptop and Malwarebytes still finds things that are missed by AVG & Norton.

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I know I am late to the conversation, but for posterity, I thought I would mentioned that it sounds to me like you are experiencing backscatter.

 

Spammers will have programmes guess email addresses. Millions of combinations of words and numbers in front of a known to exist domain. They send spams that have their address spoofed as things like [email protected], [email protected], [email protected], etc and eventually it finds a real address.

 

The people receive spam from the spoofed address and think it really came from the "reply to" address. The automated blocking, and personal notes saying stop it are examples of backscatter. So it is possbile no one hacked you, and your computer is virus and malware free, just some spammer randomly generated a guess of an email address that happens to be yours.

 

Still, if you use Windows, and I suggest switching for most people, do run anti-malware programmes and take normal security precautions anyway.

 

Just saying it sounds like, as in it could be but there is no way to be sure, that it could be backscatter. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backscatter_(email) ]

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