Topic: Hijacked Hotmail Spaming

[intermech]

My e-mail account that I have been using for 15 years has been sending e-mails with a single link to everyone in my address book. I know this is a common problem, but everywhere I look says stuff like "your computer has a virus," or "change your password," etc., etc. . .

Well I changed my password and security profile and it keeps happening. I have also read that these spammers may be spoofing my address. Here are some symptoms:

• I get mailer daemon messages back from old e-mail addresses that were left in my contacts list but are no longer valid.
  The e-mails that were supposedly sent from my account do not appear in my inbox or deleted items.
  The e-mails that were supposedly sent from my account do not have my auto-signature on them.
  

I have taken the following steps:

• Deleted all of my contacts.
  Changed my password.
  Checked all of my computers for viruses.

Other observations . . .

• I have only every received these kinds of e-mails from yahoo and hotmail accounts, never gmail, att, or edu's
  Nothing in my account appears to have been tampered with.
  Changing my password did not prevent subsequent mailings.

Microsoft's knowledge base is no help as usual and seems to always assume operator error. Can anyone add any insight? 

[Strat]

If your email address is being spoofed, it means they are just faking the 'return address'. This is like trying to pin someone down for faking a return address on an envelope in usps.  As far as I know, there is nothing you can do to prevent this, besides getting a new email address and informing everyone not to accept mail from your old address, that it is unverified.

I had this problem once on an account some years ago. I wound up making a new account. After looong time, it stopped. I assume the faker was shutdown.

PM me and I will give you an email to contact me. Then you can forward to me one of these 'impersonating emails' others receive from you and perhaps I can verify if they are spoofing or accessing your account.

After deleting your contacts, the emails from 'you' to the same people continued?

[intermech]

Thanks for your offer. I have requested that one of the recipients send me back an e-mail so that I can get it to you. Are you looking for the header/source, etc?

Also, yes, it still sent to recipients that were previously on my contact list. I now have no contacts.

[Strat]

Yes, I'll be looking in the header. Let me know if you get a hold of one.

Strat