My Yahoo mail contacts are getting spam mail from me

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Crissy Maier on July 2, 2011 at 8:11am

I'm not sure what to make of your problem.  Someone once told me I was spamming them.  Checked my computer didn't find anything.  I never heard anything back from anyone else so I dropped it.  

 

But my IT friend recently recommended this free anti virus for Mac.

http://www.clamxav.com/

 

Good Luck

 

Permalink Reply by Lon Winters on July 3, 2011 at 11:28pm

I just re-read your post title and deleted my initial response. Make sure the SPAM email they are getting is not infected with anything more dangerous, then as a few of your contacts to forward these emails to you. The message should contain data that shows the internet path it took to get to them and perhaps is you can actually trace it back to your IP address. Typically, this is a Trojan Horse that looks at your contact list and sends the email. But, since it's a Yahoo account, I don't know where they are looking. Have you used any of the services that connect your contact list to other services, like Facebook? Do you maintain a a local copy of your contacts that you sync with your computer? 

 

You may want to write Yahoo and see what they have to say, there may even by info on their site regarding email Spam. And you should also do a complete virus and malware scan of your computer - I'm STILL a PC user, so I don't know of a good Mac program for this. 

Permalink Reply by Cliff Ravenscraft @GSPN on July 5, 2011 at 4:53pm

It  could be that this message that people are getting is not actually from your mail account.  Like Lon says, when a friend tells you they got a msg from you, that email should have everything to track the source to confirm it is not coming from you.

I can send an email to anyone and make it "appear" to be be from you Murray.

 

If I had access to your Yahoo Account for only 10 minutes, I could easily get a list of every person you've every sent an email to and everyone you have ever received an email from.  Not only that, but I could also get a list of everyone on your contact list.

 

Then, if you change your Yahoo Password, it wouldn't matter. I could just send emails that "appear" to be from your email address and it would be just as effective as if I actually sent them from  your account, providing I simply send them to the people that I extracted from your account.

 

 

Does that make sense?

Permalink Reply by Murray Solomon on July 5, 2011 at 6:36pm

That makes perfect sense but I'm left wondering what action steps I should take at this point. Is there anything I can do to prevent my contact list from getting blasted with more spam. If what you said is correct, that they've already lifted my contact list, it sounds like there's nothing I can do at this point.

Permalink Reply by Cliff Ravenscraft @GSPN on July 5, 2011 at 7:49pm

If they lifted your contact list, I cannot think of anything you can do.  I wonder if anyone else has suggestions.  

 

 

Permalink Reply by David Jacobs @davidjacobs on July 8, 2011 at 9:49pm

My wife had the same problem with her Yahoo mail account. Spam flying out all over the place. I did some poking around but decided it was too much trouble to track down so my solution was the nuclear option. I deleted her Yahoo mail account completely and started her on Gmail. She hasn't had a problem since. Yes it's a hassle letting people know of your new email and such, but way less time than tracking down the problem.

Permalink Reply by Murray Solomon on July 11, 2011 at 9:00am

Thanks for the responses. I changed my Yahoo password and it seems to have not happened again in 10 days. If it does, i'll have to also take the nuclear option of changing my e-mail address. Two interesting things to note.

1) I did receive a bunch of "failure notice" emails for all the bad addresses that I had in my contact list. So that leads me to believe that the email actually came from my account.

2) I went into my Yahoo settings and was able to see the locations from where my Yahoo account was logged in. On the days of the mass spam, my account was logged into from some very strange locations such as Usbeskistan, China, and some other countries.

Permalink Reply by Cliff Ravenscraft @GSPN on July 11, 2011 at 9:12am

If that is the case, should be okay for now.  Keep those passwords strong. :)

Cliff