Email Hacked

[Barmaid]

My btinternet account has been compromised.

I woke up this morning to about 200 returned emails and failure delivery notices.

I've immediately changed my password (it wasn't the same as any password I use anywhere else so I don't know how that happened).

Anyway, I've sent out a LOAD of spam to anyone and everyone. How can I prevent this? What else can I do?

[Old_Geezer]

I'm thinking it could be someone spoofing your address.

Only way you can prevent it being sent from your account is to change the passsword to one difficult to guess (and for you to remember :-) ) which it seems you've done.

Unsure there is anything more you can do.

[Old_Geezer]

May be worth your while scanning your PC for virus/malware in case it's been compromised in some way.

[Barmaid]

Thanks OG. It was the account itself that was hacked since ALL my contacts are on the BTyahoo account whereas only a handful are locally on my machine. PW is now changed. Although how the hell they guessed that is beyond me, it's lots of random letters and numbers.

[237SJ]

That happened to me last week. BTYahoo as well. The only consolation seems to be it was a one-off. Whoever it was got into my account because the spam was sent to everyone in my address book so it wasn`t just someone guessing my email address. There have been a couple of posts on here about it. I changed my password.

[netibiza]

Happened a couple of times to me with Yahoo, they even send me an email saying I was hacked from Poland! I changed password again hopefully this time it'll be OK:

[Barmaid]

Yeah problem is I've sent rude emails to a whole host of business contacts.

Now my account has been blacklisted. What a ******

[Sqad]

It has happened to me with Hotmail.
Two different email addresses from my contacts, advertising home employment and when I replied........"postmaster.wrong email address"

[netibiza]

Yes I sent some pretty strange emails out which is how they knew it wasn't me. I then sent out to all contacts a message saying it wasn't me but I squeezed all that in the title space so they didn't have to open anything.

[237SJ]

As far as I know, my emails don`t display my name but my name was displayed on the spam ones which was odd. There was a link on the spams so I was frantically texting everyone telling them not to open the link. The spam was also sent to my own address and was in my spam folder. I asked my friend, who is in IT Security in a large company, how this happens and even he didn`t know. There seems to be a splurge of hacking at the moment though.

[chelle7272]

Send an email to contacts explaining what happened. It happened to a colleague of mine, she was mortified but people were fine and understood.
(She wasn't happy when an ex responded though!)

[Barmaid]

I've deleted all my contacts now so that will stop them in the future. I've also deleted all previous emails.

[cameliaheartfelt]

hi Barmaid, just noticed your posting. The same happened to me last night on both of my BT yahoo accounts so you are not the only one. Must be a spate! Very worrying, how do they get a password, mine is difficult, so I thought!

[Barmaid]

Just about everyone I know with a bt or yahoo account has been hacked lately. I think they use software to crack your password. Mine is random letters and numbers so it would have taken someone years to work that out.

[237SJ]

BTW I`ve just emailed BT and asked them if they are aware that people are having their BTYahoo accounts hacked and what they are going to do to address the problem. I`m not expecting much of a constructive answer but it will be interesting to see what they say.

[Barmaid]

I think its yahoo rather than BT.

There are loads of articles on the web about it atm. Apparently, the only cure is to change your password and keep changing it.

Yahoo have fixed 2 security holes, but can't actually find the 3rd.

[mrchirpy]

I'll join the line of people whose BT Yahoo emails were hacked. It happened to me last week, I thought it was only me.

[237SJ]

I have a separatge Yahoo.co.uk address which hasn`t been hacked. My BTYahoo one was though. I`m beginning to think that someone has accessed either Yahoo or BTYahoo and that is how they are spamming (rather than guessing individual passwords). My friend in our IT Security dept (global company) said "we" fend off 2000 - 3000 intrusion attemps per day! I wouldn`t be surprised if this is the case here.

[237SJ]

excuse typos

[Sqad]

Well.....I have Hotmail and as there is no landline to our villa, i have Net 2 Internet Satellite System.......................and was STILL hacked.

[Barmaid]

Well its wasted about 1 1/2 hours of my time sorting it out this morning. I'm bloody cross.