<p>Excuse the ignorance with which this question is posed (non-techie person here ):</p>
<p>Three of my relatives/friends have recently had their email hacked into (I guess) to where I receive numerous emails apparently from them (but not). Most have no subject line or message, but just some link. Here is the text of one which did have the subject line “Hello”:
</p>
<p>I haven’t opened any of the links, of course. But my cousin says this one is Viagra spam.</p>
<p>So…</p>
<p>How is this happening to them?
Are there any steps I need to take as a recipient to make sure nothing bad happens to me (besides not opening the links).</p>
<p>I’ve asked my one cousin what she uses for anti-virus/malware etc. protection. The other two wouldn’t have a clue, lol.</p>
<p>I use AVG 2011, updates daily.</p>
<p>TIA for any info.</p>
<p>ETA: I see the link url does not show directly. It was http: // xxsURL.de/144p - without the spaces, of course.</p>
<p>The easiest “hack” is to try a list of commonly used passwords. This is particularly effective if the email provider allows an unlimited number of failed “tries” (which is why many financial sites kick you off is you don’t get the UserName/Password combination right after three tries). So put a number in your password. If the hack is sophisticated there’s really nothing you can do but find the most secure email provider you can. Let’s see … how does <a href="mailto:jmmom@fbi.gov">jmmom@fbi.gov</a> sound to you?</p>
<p>This happens because people open email attachments and click links in emails that they shouldn’t. This seems to especially happen to women who love to forward all the ‘cute’ attachments and ‘self help’ attachments to everyone they know. Sometimes these attachments have bits of code that are harmful and then can spam everyone in the person’s recipient list. </p>
<p>Clicking these attachments is probably the chief way many viruses make it onto a computer - that and visiting malicious websites which often happen when one clicks one of the links in the email. </p>
<p>The good news is that it’s most likely not that someone hacked your email by figuring out your password. They don’t need to actually get into your email in order to send you the spam or to spam others.</p>
<p>The best you can do is to -
Don’t open email attachments or click links in the body of the email even from friends unless you have a high level of confidence in the link - i.e. not all the little joke and self-help links (like the ‘10 things affecting Women’s health’ or something like that).
Keep up to date on security patches on your computer.
Keep a good anti-virus program on your computer and make sure it’s updated.
If you get this spam from a friend, contact them and tell them their computer is sending out spam and they need to do what you do - update security patches and have a good anti-virus program installed and scan their system.</p>
<p>Sometimes email hacks occur at the level of the online retailer. You set up an account with an online retailer with a password that you use for your email and give the online retailer your email address. Someone hacks into the online retailer and with the information can hack into your email account.</p>
<p>Had this happen to me and I found out immdeiately because I have always inlcuded my own email address as a contact in my contact list. That way if my account does get hijacked I will get an email from myself and I can then notify everyone to ignore any thing from me until further notice. Delete your complete contact list (a pain I know) start a new one and reload your contacts. Do not copy and past because one of them could have the hijack link in it. Print it out an re enter it by hand. Do a complete virus scan and run the free copy of Malwarebytes.
Goos Luck</p>
<p>Percussiondad–I had my email hacked once. I quite using the contact list entirely. If I’m going to be hacked, at least I can not subject my friends to the detritus that will come.</p>
<p>ellemenope I agree 100% but someone had told me once to always include yourself in the contacts because otherwise you wont know if your contact list has been hijacked until your friends or whoever complain to you about the spam you are sending. With my family/bussiness email I have my contact list in a word document so that I can just copy and paste the address from it.</p>
<p>On the other hand, you get to hear from people you haven’t heard from for a long time when someone hacks your email account and sends out an email that guarantees them 10 hours of sex. Response is a lot better than when you sent out Christmas cards last year.</p>
<p>I wonder if this is the result of a massive data security breach somewhere. I have friends who have recently experienced the same thing. One had his Hotmail account shut down because it was found to be the source of so much spam.</p>
<p>That’s what you’ve always been told, but no, it doesn’t. Criminals and hackers use passwords immediately upon discovering them. Changing your password hourly would help, daily less so, and every month not at all. You should choose a password that is impossible to guess and keep it.</p>
):</p>