Re: [OT] web email acct compromised
On 25/12/11 13:47, hvw59601 wrote:
Hi,
Recently one of my Yahoo accts was compromised. Mail was sent all over
the place with nonsense, to LDU also.
I don't particularly favor Yahoo and would like to get rid of the acct
alltogether. How?
And how is an account compromised? Why pick on me? FWIW I changed the
passwd.
Happy Solstice
Hugo
What actually happened? If it was just that people got messages
appearing to come from you, that's not unusual - once someone knows your
email address it is quite easy to fake an email that looks like it came
from you. This can happen without your account having been hacked - it
could be that a friend of yours has a virus on their computer that sent
their address book to a spammer, or as a result of your email address
being publicly available on the web somewhere. One question is whether
the emails sent in your name were to people you know, or just random
addresses?
The reason people do this is usually so that someone else gets the
hassle/blame for their spamming / phishing activities, or in the cases
where they have someone's address book, because someone is more likely
to open an attachment that looks like it comes from a friend. It is most
likely nothing to do with you personally.
If you have definite evidence that someone other than yourself can read
your inbox, or other information that is only available by logging in to
your account, then that's when you need to change your password etc. In
that case, you should probably also contact Yahoo to let them know.
Hope this helps,
andy baxter.
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