Has my E-Mail been hacked?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Owen.C93
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Owen.C93

Owen.C93

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GTP_Owen
Sup guys, I just signed into hotmail and saw I had a couple of "delivery failures" from hotmail saying I sent an E-Mail to someone about a shopping site (Obvious spam is obvious) anyway I never sent it but it was to someone in my contacts.

There's nothing in my sent folder. So I guess that someone sent spam E-mails from my account due to the fact that the people were in my contact list.

It's no huge problem as it's just my spam account. But is this definitely a case of being hacked or just some scam that I got sent? (It was from postmaster@mail.hotmail.com)
 
Maybe somebody was sending from an outside account and using your address as the return address? It's happened to me on Hotmail, too...

The general suck-ness of Hotmail is why I'm on GMail now... :lol:
 
You should be asking yourself why you're still using Hotmail.
 
I reckon you should change you're password to be safe and if you're password is the same for other sites change it too and change the 'special question' needed to login. A Botnet or spammer is definatly on you're account
 
niky
Maybe somebody was sending from an outside account and using your address as the return address? It's happened to me on Hotmail, too...

The general suck-ness of Hotmail is why I'm on GMail now... :lol:
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Perhaps, I'm not sure how that would work.

Omnis
You should be asking yourself why you're still using Hotmail.
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Why what's wrong with it?
Kinetic
I reckon you should change you're password to be safe and if you're password is the same for other sites change it too and change the 'special question' needed to login. A Botnet or spammer is definatly on you're account
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Yeah I have changed now, it was a pretty easy one to crack.


Thanks for the replies guys.
 
It's called spoofing, and it's one of the most common methods spammers use to defeat anti-spam software. When they infect a machine with a spambot they steal the address books both for targets and for fake senders. The idea is that if a good from address is used, the spam will get through to more people.

It has nothing to do with your email account, and nobody is logging in to it to send from it. wherever they're sending from, they're simply using your email address in the From: field. That's all.

I see messages from myself all the time in my spam filter.
 
niky
Jondot
You're not 13.
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And it's no longer the 20th Century.
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Any decent reason? Seems to work fine, keep in mind I use an external mail client (Thunderbird)

It could be spoofing, it was just odd because I had to failures at the same time. Which made me thing something had been sent to all my contacts, but those two failed.
 
Change your password, and change your email provider go Gmail or Yahoo at worst.

Use your hotmail as a backup and use it as a spare email you give out for stuff you sign up for but dont want to be bothered etc.
 
owen.c93
Any decent reason? Seems to work fine, keep in mind I use an external mail client (Thunderbird)
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Hotmail is annoying for use with mail clients anyway. When I wish to delete a message on Mail(Mac client) I'd also like it to disappear in my web-based email front. As far as I know out of the big providers only GMail offer IMAP abilities, which in my experience is a must with external mail clients.
 
believe me, yahoo mail is not hijacker proof. my yahoo has been swiped, and i'm getting spam from myself!
 
GTP_V8SuperCars
Change your password, and change your email provider go Gmail or Yahoo at worst.

Use your hotmail as a backup and use it as a spare email you give out for stuff you sign up for but dont want to be bothered etc.
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Done, and it was a spam account. I have another Hotmail account that I use personally.

SweetshopUnion
Hotmail is annoying for use with mail clients anyway. When I wish to delete a message on Mail(Mac client) I'd also like it to disappear in my web-based email front. As far as I know out of the big providers only GMail offer IMAP abilities, which in my experience is a must with external mail clients.
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Oh I don't normally delete things so no problem there. The only annoyance that I have in Thunderbird is when I read a message it isn't marked as read in Hotmail, so I have 30 unread messages online, but I've read them all on my computer. (This didn't happen with my "Windows Live Mail application")

It's a bit late in the game to be changing E-Mails now. I will probably go with GMail if I create a new account though.
 

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