Strange Email

[Tilly2]

This evening I received an email from an elderly friend of mine. IT seemed a bot odd because the subject, prior to opening said OMG! and this is not a phrase she is likely to use.

When I opened it it was just a long rambling website address. I copied and pasted the first part of the address into the address bar and it was an advert for an in-roll toilet roll deodoriser. Rolorol or something.

I rang her, to ask why she had sent me a daft emails and she told me she'd been in hospital for two days and had only come home today. She has not used her laptop for weeks.
It had also been sent to one other of her contacts.

How has that happened please? She was back home at the time the email was sent.

[boxtops]

Tilly, it's spam - somehow a spammer's got hold of your friend's email address - you should never open a link in an email you're not expecting, or think looks odd, no matter who it's from.

[factor-fiction]

http://www.theanswerbank.co.uk/Technology/Question1222000.html

She should change her password. She may also want to use a different email address for a while if she has more than one

[Tilly2]

I'm sorry. I have put this in Crosswords and not computers. I will now switch the light on!

[Tilly2]

Thank you both for a) not telling me off for being in the wrong section and b) telling me what the problem is.

I will phone her again and tell her to change her password. Will the fact that I looked at the website have a detrimental effect on my computer?

I have done a malware scan since and a quick MSE scan and nothing untoward has shown up.