Hotmail sending spam mail

[Otase]

What is your recommended action when your hotmail is sending spam mail to everyone?
i heard Skype associating hotmail can be one at fault, probably some bot.
(closing hotmail account might not work either)

Sounds like 4 tracking cookies were at fault,
discovered after trying another antispyware other than Malwarebytes.
(what i find weird is: how could these tracking cookies not be removed by ccleaner)

 

[UsernameIssues]

I doubt that tracking cookies were to blame.

CCleaner will leave cookies that are associated with your Favorites/Bookmarks if you tell it to.




If the SPAM was sent to those that you have listed in your Hotmail account contacts, then it sounds like someone or something gained access to that account. One solution might be to change your password and not keep contacts in the account. Keep contacts in a separate document - then copy/paste as needed. I know that is not convenient, but it has worked for some users that I support. (They came up with the idea. I did not suggest it to them. It has worked for them.)

The more e-mails people forward around, the greater the chances are that their e-mail address will be harvested. (But that does not give the bad guys your list of ALL contacts - unless you forwarded something to ALL contacts.) Sometimes you will see a list of e-mail addresses in the body of the forwarded e-mail. Some e-mail forwards bounce around for years. If the e-mail passes thru a compromised e-mail server, then those e-mail addresses can get harvested. SPAM can be sent using any/all of those harvested e-mail addresses as the fake/spoofed sender address.

You might want to create a post in the security sub-forum and let them help you scan your computer.

 

[A Guy]

As mentioned, chances are your account isn't actually sending the email. Someone may have harvested a list of your contacts from an email, and is spoofing your address. The recipients can choose to display the source of the email. Even if the address is spoofed, and shows as yours, usually the actual originating address will show in the source. While viewing the email, they would click on the Actions drop down upper right> View message source



This will open a new window/tab with a long string of info which will contain the originating address and ip address. EX:

x-store-info:J++/JTCzmObr++wNraA4Pa4f5Xd6uenss1zcyrLyprUDwLWCnjfr1z7IHEqiPm65RpmFfcjzsTp62egB/xwEOGzTRPocz0K/Tt8wQn8guc4Miazj2xIinAUS4W3aQFNAJ6jPmTgo8rw=
Authentication-Results: hotmail.com; spf=pass (sender IP is 66.231.87.89) smtp.mailfrom=bounce-1151_HTML-306407323-445077-75384-5@bounce.papajohns-specials.com; dkim=pass header.d=papajohns-specials.com; x-hmca=pass header.id=[email protected]
X-SID-PRA: [email protected]
X-AUTH-Result: PASS
X-SID-Result: PASS

Also, look in your Sent folder, and confirm that those emails do NOT show there (did not actually originate from your address).

A Guy

 

[Otase]

Thanks A Guy, i checked with the help of Gmail on one of my contacts who recieved it and it was as you say
Someone may have harvested a list of my contacts from an email, and spoofing my address
(the source also matched the 4 tracking cookies i had with SuperAntiSpyware)

Nothing was in Sent Folder nor did i track any other activity on my hotmail account,
once i started using Firefox also forgot to configure it to not acept 3rd party cookies which should have done sooner.
Either way wasn't much of a big deal since i don't use public mail much but should be fixed now.