I have just discovered my email address is being used to forward spam- how do i stop this?

also are the people in my address book or my online details in danger?
I have just discovered my email address is being used to forward spam- how do i stop this?
I'm assuming this is a home pc - it sounds as if you are a victim of a bot (a malicious program transmitted via a virus or trojan that logs into a remote server and becomes part of a botnet). Your system is undoubtedly compromised and is being used to spam mail servers.





Scan your pc with antivirus - if you don't have any, download Avast - during installation it will prompt you to run a boot time scan - say yes - when you eventually reboot Avast will scan your system - free here


http://www.filehippo.com/download_avast_...





Also run a scan with Superantispyware


http://www.filehippo.com/download_supera...


update and run a full system scan, quarantining all detected items - it may take some time but let it run!





To prevent further infection, make sure you have the latest windows updates and the latest version of Internet Explorer; better still use Firefox; make sure your windows firewall is turned on (control panel%26gt;windows firewall).





Download and install Threatfire a free tool that monitors your system for suspicious behaviour - although it is a real time monitor, it can scan your pc too - worth running a full scan. It won't interfere with your existing antivirus software.


http://www.threatfire.com/
Reply:I'm not the only one then!! How annoying is it, i would dearly love to get my hands on the people who do this - they would regret their actions lol. I dont think its that some one has got hold of my password, more that they have got my email address and are using that. Pretty hard to stop using that though isnt it.


Seriously though, it is very annoying and I have got avast, norton,etc although not hippo, i will give that a go.



Reply:very interesting as i had an e mail from me to me yesterday and i deleted it as spam , i will keep coming back to this question to find out more as i obviously need help with this subject myself, great question and starred





thank you zoomjet i took notice of your advice and just done a scan by threatfire it found one threat and i have got rid of it , once again may i thank you
Reply:Your email address could be in a database that sends out spam. You can send mail from any email address you like (although some ISPs are filtering these out). There might not be a lot you can do about it. It really depends what has happened.
Reply:I agree with zoomjet.I think you are infected. Your pc is probably a botnet, used to send spam and denial of service attacks. Millions of pc's are use like this.Chances are you have a backdoor trojan.Time to start scanning
Reply:Sorry but im afaid somebody or a company or some sort of webiste/programme had your password. With this i have found when this programme send messages to people they do not appear in your "sent" box so therefore you do not know they have been sent.
Reply:Yeah Change your password Deffinatly and make sure that you dont give out your password or enter it into any websites. This is always bad :( Orr Get a new Email Adress. :) X
Reply:the best thing is to change your password. if that doesn't work the best is to delete the account all together if possible.





good luck ..... =)
Reply:This is mainly because someone has found out your password. I strongly recommend that you change it
Reply:And don't tell your "friends" again what your password is.