E-mail hacked..Now what?
E-mail hacked..Now what?
Well I woke up this morning to the sound of a dozen returned e-mails on my I-phone. With a closer look I realized my e-mail was hacked and e-mails were sent out to probably everybody in my contacts (not the way I wanted to start my Saturday morning). The e-mail sent in the subject line had "breaking news (and my name)" with a link inside the e-mail. Since I'm not that tech savvy I just wanted to know what I should do now for security purposes since this has never happened to me. I was told by a friend to change my password which I have done. It's a yahoo account if that matters.. Anything else I need to do? Also how could this have happened and how can I prevent it from happening again. Thanks all..
- InvestorNewb
- Posts: 1663
- Joined: Mon Sep 03, 2012 11:27 am
Re: E-mail hacked..Now what?
Run a virus check on your PC. If you don't have antivirus software installed, you can use the Free version of:
http://www.superantispyware.com/index.html
(I once had an infected PC and this was the only software, among 4-5 others that I tried, that was successfully able to rid the trojan.)
http://www.superantispyware.com/index.html
(I once had an infected PC and this was the only software, among 4-5 others that I tried, that was successfully able to rid the trojan.)
My Portfolio: VTI [US], VXUS [Int'l], VNQ [REIT], VCN [Canada] (largest to smallest)
Re: E-mail hacked..Now what?
Yup - sending those viagra ads to everyone in your contact list is not in the best of taste - At least run Microsoft Security Essentials - it can find/delete most malware ... foolproof way to fix it is to reformat and reload the operating system. It seems from the recent news reports that everyone's email is hacked these days anyways
Re: E-mail hacked..Now what?
What type of email account?
If it is a google, you can use a 2-step verification process which sends your phone a text message code prior to being able to login on a new machine.
If it is a google, you can use a 2-step verification process which sends your phone a text message code prior to being able to login on a new machine.
Re: E-mail hacked..Now what?
Is this only for web mail? How would it work with an email client like Thunderbird?enderland wrote:What type of email account?
If it is a google, you can use a 2-step verification process which sends your phone a text message code prior to being able to login on a new machine.
I always wanted to be a procrastinator.
- InvestorNewb
- Posts: 1663
- Joined: Mon Sep 03, 2012 11:27 am
Re: E-mail hacked..Now what?
OP stated it was a Yahoo email account.enderland wrote:What type of email account?
If it is a google, you can use a 2-step verification process which sends your phone a text message code prior to being able to login on a new machine.
My Portfolio: VTI [US], VXUS [Int'l], VNQ [REIT], VCN [Canada] (largest to smallest)
Re: E-mail hacked..Now what?
Jimmy, yes, there are a number of things that you might want to do (like making sure you have an updated anti-virus program)--check out this step-by-step guide on "Understanding, Cleaning And Preventing Spyware" on the MajorGeeks forum.jimmy wrote:Anything else I need to do? Also how could this have happened and how can I prevent it from happening again. Thanks all..
Re: E-mail hacked..Now what?
Thanks everybody for all of the information. One more question regarding the e-mail and link that was sent to the recipients, which happened to be a link to a diet pill. Is there e-mail now compromised if they clicked on the link? Most people who have contacted me deleted it before opening but others went to the link..
- frugaltype
- Posts: 1952
- Joined: Wed Apr 24, 2013 9:07 am
Re: E-mail hacked..Now what?
I don't know. If I had clicked on a bogus link, I would run the free MalwareBytes Anti-Malware program.jimmy wrote:Thanks everybody for all of the information. One more question regarding the e-mail and link that was sent to the recipients, which happened to be a link to a diet pill. Is there e-mail now compromised if they clicked on the link? Most people who have contacted me deleted it before opening but others went to the link..
Besides changing the password on your yahoo email account, check to see if they changed your reply to address. I sounds like they didn't if you're seeing bounced mail, but I would check everything there.
Re: E-mail hacked..Now what?
About a week ago, I started receiving pretty close to 100 or so returned e-mails, but when I looked at them none of them were to people who would have been in my address book. I had two accounts that were compromised by this, one at Earthlink and one at Yahoo. I talked to a service representative at EarthLink and he said that scammers will take e-mail addresses and try to figure out passwords and then they use those accounts to send out mass mailings that would otherwise be stopped by the filters that most accounts have. I tried to change my password and it didn't work for some reason, so he walked me through it to change in one place that was needed to send outgoing mail and then again for incoming mail. Then, I went to Yahoo and did the same thing. Haven't received another returned e-mail since then. I had a relatively simply three word (six letters together) password that was apparently easily hacked. Before this I hadn't really contemplated what someone would do with my e-mail account. Now I have far more secure passwords. On both EarthLink and Yahoo as I added the new passwords, there was an indication of how strong the password was and both listed the newer one as high strength level.
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- Posts: 1239
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- Location: Atlanta, GA
Re: E-mail hacked..Now what?
I've had the same thing happen to my Yahoo email account twice. All it took was changing my Yahoo password.
Re: E-mail hacked..Now what?
The number of companies offering two factor authentication has started to grow quite large. Off the top of my I head I can think of:Drain wrote:Yahoo has its own implementation of the same feature.
- Google
Yahoo
Hotmail/Outlook.com
Facebook
Twitter
Dropbox
Evernote
LinkedIn
Box
If you have an account with any of these that you use regularly, you probably want to give some thought to using two factor authentication.
- arthurdawg
- Posts: 929
- Joined: Mon Jun 02, 2008 7:47 am
Re: E-mail hacked..Now what?
My yahoo account (and lots of other yahoo accounts) have been "spoofed" lately. Apparently this involves an attach on the server, whereby they are able to find any email addresses into and out of your account going back however the server has stored them.
As far as I can tell (Yahoo has little to say on the matter - it apparently reflects their server security and they don't want to admit to any issues) this doesn't necessarily involve them breaking into the email account in question, rather they just hit the server. You see the emails in your account that bounce because the servers think you sent them when you didn't.
I went ahead and changed out passwords (I had 2 step authentication turned on already) just in case. No further issues so far.
As far as I can tell (Yahoo has little to say on the matter - it apparently reflects their server security and they don't want to admit to any issues) this doesn't necessarily involve them breaking into the email account in question, rather they just hit the server. You see the emails in your account that bounce because the servers think you sent them when you didn't.
I went ahead and changed out passwords (I had 2 step authentication turned on already) just in case. No further issues so far.
Indexed Fully!
Re: E-mail hacked..Now what?
Make sure to review your security questions and your secondary e-mail. I've seen those changed by hacks so that people change their password and then get it changed again by the hackers.
Re: E-mail hacked..Now what?
This thread is now in the Personal Consumer Issues forum (computer security).