Email hijacked

[Shyria Dracnoir]

Apparently one of my email addresses got hijacked recently and started sending out spam mail. How do I fix this?

[Grandmaster_Skweeb]

For one: go through all your other accounts (games, bank, phone service provider, ISP, etc.) and make stronger passwords. If your email was jacked that easily assume that all other accounts are equally at risk. Especially accounts tied to that email address.

Two: Pray that nothing real importance was contained in said account that could be used against you.

Three: Contact your email's provider and hope that the process to get it back isn't a total pain in the ass riddled with red tape and frustration. that is if you don't have access to your email anymore. If not, there's not much you can do. Not to sound like an ass, but this is what happens when one have weak passwords and/or weak computer security.

Alternate three: In the case of a friend of mine who still had account access but spam was still being sent: Change the password and do a thorough sweeping for malware on your computer.

Now this part is just my opinion so take it with a grain of salt: If you use M$ Look Out! (outlook, hurrr), thunderbird, or any programs that store email locally get rid of 'em. Those are great systems for spammers to exploit.

[Krylo]

Before doing any of that: Check your sent mails. If you don't have the mails in your sent mail you are probably being spoofed not hacked.

Spoofing is a lot easier than hacking an account, and you can get dozens of spoofable addresses from a single hacked account by grabbing its friends list. For this reason most spammers spoof e-mails rather than hack them as much as possible. Account hackers generally are a little less obvious in their activities. That is to say they'll go through read and undeleted mail for private information they might be able to use (names of accounts at other places where they could request a password... and then read it in your mail, etc.), or steal your friendslist to sell to companies/spam spoofers/whomever else.

If you're being spoofed, rather than hacked, there's absolutely nothing you can do to stop it and changing your passwords/contacting your provider will do literally nothing for you so there's no point in doing all that.

Another check is to simply change the password on your account and see if the mails continue. This isn't a surefire thing though, as usually spammers will only use a spoofed account for a few weeks to a month or so before moving on to using new addresses.

[Shyria Dracnoir]

I went ahead and changed my password. Hopefully this will help.

EDIT: Oh dear, my sent emails don't have anything spammy in them. I'll keep a stronger eye on my accounts and go around changing passwords.

EDIT 2: Thankfully my bank info is safe for now. Haven't seen any iffy purchases.

[BitVyper]

Yeah, this particular one is really prevalent lately ("I was broke, then I wasn't. Here's a suspicious link!"). I didn't think you were being spoofed 'cause any time I've seen that happen, it's always come in as just an email address without the associated name. Like I said in my PM though, I don't know anything about it, so Krylo is probably right.

I usually put myself on all my contact lists so that I get the emails when this stuff happens.

[Nikose Tyris]

I believe that the user we both know "Bendlee" has also been infected, Shyria. Might want to poke him. I forget his NPF username.

[Flarecobra]

I've been getting a lot of those.... course they all come up "No subject", which usually means I junk them without even looking at them.