Stop your email from getting hacked?

JTR357

JTR357

Joined
Sep 10, 2007
Messages
14,135
I wasn't sure whether to post this in community or G&G.I guess a computer is a gadget,so I posted it here.If I'm wrong,MODS place it where you see fit,Thanks

Last year I lost my "Live" & "comcast" email accts.I started getting a whole bunch of spam,then people in my contact list started getting spam(in my name!),than one day I didn't have access to them.I'm thinking a hacker (or bot?) gained access,changed my password & took it over.Honestly I have no idea.This is pure speculation.All I know is I lost those email accts.

The same thing is happening now to my gmail acct.I'm getting a whole bunch of spam.I report it as spam,but I still keep getting it.I changed my password,did a virus/spyware scan.Still getting spam.

I don't know what else to do.I do all my business & banking through my gmail acct.This really blows.I hate hackers.:mad:

Any tips.Is there ANY way to STOP this?

Thanks
 
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7:06 AM (2 hours ago)

to me

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Click to expand...

Here's a typical spam email I get.Notice the fishy return address/sender.
 
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I get very little spam in gmail. The only spam to my @bladeforums.com is from SEO who think I'm the administrator.

I am pretty diligent when I get spam, I report it and don't see much from that source afterwards. When I check my spam folder though I can see they continue to send but gmail tosses them out for me.

Do you post your email addresses on line? That doesn't take a hacker to collect, just a bot.
 
Esav Benyamin said:
I get very little spam in gmail. The only spam to my @bladeforums.com is from SEO who think I'm the administrator.

I am pretty diligent when I get spam, I report it and don't see much from that source afterwards. When I check my spam folder though I can see they continue to send but gmail tosses them out for me.

Do you post your email addresses on line? That doesn't take a hacker to collect, just a bot.
Click to expand...

No I used to do that with my Live & Comcast accts.I figured that's how I lost them to a bot.Now I tell everyone who wants to contact me to go through the bladeforums emailing system.

This is spam from a different address every time.It comes in waves too.About four or five every six hours or so.
 
Would my email provider be my ISP or gmail?

Just got another.Do people really fall for this?Look how shady it looks.

_Cheap.Insurance_ <info@doodoo.ru>
10:04 AM (6 minutes ago)

to me
_Save__Over_$419_Or_More__On_Auto_Insurance_

37q.g2u.nl










_opt-Out-Offer:
37u.g2u.nl

_opt-Out-List:
37v.g2u.nl
Click to expand...
 
I have a juno email forever. now I can block sender and report emails as junk. they also have a junk list so some emails show up in my junk mail folder. I would look at you email provider and ask them if you can do all of this too. maybe this will help you out. I also make up some wild wild passwords so I have to write them down so I will not lose them. you might want to do the same thing. I wish you luck.
 
Whatever happened last year is irrelevant. As far as I can figure out your current complaint is you're getting a lot of email spam. That has nothing to do with getting hacked. Changing your password will not help.

Are you going to gmail with your web browser (Firefox, Explorer, Chrome, etc.) or are you downloading your mail with an email program (Thunderbird, Outlook, etc.)?

Gmail has very good spam filters, but if you're using an email program it could be set to show you everything, even messages that gmail has marked as spam. Take a look at your settings.

If you're using a web browser to read your mail, gmail has a setting to override filters and show everything in your inbox. That's not the default, but sometimes settings get changed and you don't remember ever doing that ... maybe the Net Demons did it ... you can change it back to the default.
 
By the way, I've been posting my email address all over the net for years ( CougarAllen@gmail.com -- see, I'm not scared) so I get sent plenty of spam, but the gmail spam filters catch almost all of it. I see about two or three a month that they didn't catch.
 
Changing your password to a more secure one won't stop spam. But it might keep your account from being hacked. Make sure your recovery information is current. Back up email, cell phone they can reset and send new password to.
 
If you do real business with your e-mail and the spam bothers you I would suggest getting a e-mail you pay for. Those accounts generally speaking are more immune to spam
 
Are you opening those emails or are you sending them to the spam folder immediately?

If you are opening them, STOP! Immediately send them to your spam folder, or delete them. DO NOT OPEN THEM!

I use a live.com account, a gmail account, and a couple msn.com accounts, and have no real issues at all. The two corporate email accounts I have get zero spam thanks to their filters.

My general rule of thumb is if I don't recognize the sender, it gets deleted or sent to the spam folder immediately.
 
I don't think many people realize exactly what is happening to you, and you may not either.

This is EXTREMELY common. I ran a web development and online marketing company from 2009-2012, and I had encounters with about 100 people that this exact same thing happened to. They run a bot very fast, sending e-mails to everyone in your contact list (and now Facebook contacts, phone contacts, Google+ contacts, etc. all get put in a contact list that is linked to your e-mail usually). You can be sitting in your e-mail account and watch it happen and still end up sending 2,000 spam e-mails before you even know what's going on.

Here's the kicker; there isn't a single source of this. Some of it is from PC viruses that farm your password, some is from websites you sign up for using the same password as your e-mail that get hacked (they have your e-mail and a password, if it matches they have access), but I think even more are people that simply get the answers to your security questions from public information. What city were you born (Facebook) mother's maiden name (Ancestry.com)... I mean, it doesn't take a rocket scientist to get into your e-mail. Smart hackers can even associate a mobile phone # the first time they get in and the average user will just change their password, but the hacker just has to get the password sent back to their phone each time. With most of these methods the hacker will not lose access after you change your password.

You need to do an all out security blitz. Clear out your entire contact list (there are 2 or 3 seperate ones in Gmail. You need to find them all and delete all contacts.), run Anti-Virus (Mcaffee and Norton ARE NOT ENOUGH. You need to go to download.com and download Malwarebytes - everybody does. There are several types of malware that Norton doesn't consider a virus for some reason. Also, Microsoft has some good tools available on their PC health websites), you need to change your security questions and personal information, and finally change your password. If you have a Phone # associated with your account, you might have to change it - it is possible your mobile phone is compromised, but see if a full security blitz will remedy your problem first. Key loggers, Trojans, trap doors, and several other viruses will make everything you do in vain, so make sure you run Malwarebytes, but also keep an up to date version of Norton on your PC active.
 
And quit opening those e-mails! If they have been in your e-mail (I don't think Gmail is supsceptible to this, but many e-mail providers are) they can change settings sometimes that will allow certain scripts to run that will infect your CPU again without you clicking on anything.


If you know it's spam, delete it and don't open it.
 
Thanks for all the helpful replies everyone.Sorry I didn't reply sooner but I was on vacation & didn't have internet access.

I've stopped opening them as suggested.I just check the box & send it straight to the spam folder.I'm getting less of them already.

Cougar Allen,I use Chrome & open my gmail through it.I'll check my settings as you suggested.
 
Do not click on the opt out link on any spam mail, it will only confirm your email address.
 
Don't use the same password for each website/email address.
Don't use easy to guess passwords - think of the 20 people who know you best, and give each of them 20 guesses at what your password is - if any one of them is even close, that's not a good password. (Don't use anything personally identifiable, like your birthdate, pet's or kid's names, favorite hobbies (sports, knives), actors, cars, singers, etc. Make it nothing even related to you.)
A good trick for the security questions, is to give the wrong answer, e.g., Q: "what is your mother's maiden name?" A: "the square root of three." That way, neither people who know you, hackers who study you, nor smart bots will ever figure it out.
Use different email addresses for different purposes. Use one for your important banking functions, and a different one for friends and family, another one for websites where you buy stuff. That way if some website that sells cheap paracord gets their database hacked, you won't get phishing emails to the account that gets your bank statements.
 
What others have suggested is dead on. Don't use the same passwords for everything. I started using a password manager (1Password) and haven't looked back. Also be careful what information you make publicly available on your social networking accounts. Using email aliases is a good idea too. I work in IT and a lot of employee's accounts with AOL, Hotmail, and Yahoo seem to get compromised. Usually it is because they used a dictionary word for their password or worse. Depending on what you keep in these free accounts, a malicious person could get enough info with very little mining and start to attempt to use that password on other accounts you have.

Use secure passwords, use secondary authentication whenever possible, and don't hand out your primary address unless you really think you need to do so. If you have multiple addresses and have them all forwarding to your primary, it might not be a bad idea to make sure that their address books are empty to prevent people you know from getting spam in the event your account gets compromised without your knowledge.
 
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I've stopped opening them & just check the box next to it,sending it straight to my SPAM folder.Since then they've become much less frequent.Maybe getting one a day now.

Once again thanks for the helpful suggestions
 
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