My email is sending spam to all my contacts?

I was wondering why my addresses disapeared! damn it.

this is exactly what happened to me - down to the email message. I’m trying to contact yahoo but no luck. have you been able to find help?

this same exact thing happened to me with hotmail account. i have told hotmail about it, no response back yet. i did a search, and it seems that this problems is going and growing through various email services…

I’m having the same problem. I also have a Yahoo domain. They said there’s nothing they can do about it. That doesn’t make sense to me. I even replied to one of the spam emails that was sent from me, to me, and I got it! I changed my password but it didn’t help. I’m going to change my domain provider. If there wasn’t a way to stop it or prevent it from happening, EVERYONE wold have this problem. This is very frustrating.

i have yahoo and the same thing happened to me. i only found out because one of my other email addresses was listed as a contact and got the spam. i panicked and then realized i could just get all my contact information back by copying from the spam email then i emailed all of them and apologized. I’m not aware of any solutions and i will probably delete my account but i don’t think that it’s hacked it’s just some company has spoofed your email address.

My yahoo email address has been tempered with after replying to yahoo id and password request. I cannot accessplease help me to retrieve my site back as all my necessary information are in there….

my yahoo email: meenaruth@yahoo.com has been blocked by scam circulating messages that i am stranded in London and need money. I need help to recover my mailing lists

I have the same problem in hotmail…, but I contact list still exist…

plz how i solve spam in yahoo

I also know someone who had the exact same problem. First thing you would want to do is change the password of your email account, then do full virus / malware scans of your computer.

I added an “X” to the beggining of all my contact e-mail addresses and currently all my contacts are bogus. I yet have to find a real solution for this…

dam, i have the same problem now on my yahoo email account. this sucks! now i might just switch email providers due to this. Its embarrassing having your email account spam out to your contacts. I hope they didn’t save my contacts. I just deleted all my contacts due to this.

Damn, I have the same problem of sending spam mails from id wihtout my knowledge……it is very embarrasing to give explanation for this…..pls if anyone knows the solutions let us know………

turn off the internet connection to your computer and do a full virus scan

Virus cleaning is not helping since I don’t think this apparent spam is originating from my computer. I suspect spammers are sending out emails to my contacts by masking ‘from’ address as my email address.

Anyone knows how to stop that?

I had the same problem recently. Apparently, some airhead sent out a message to all my contacts and about half came back as failed delivery notices. Unfortunately, I only noticed there was a problem after I had also accessed my yahoo email account on another laptop (macbook) that was operating without any problems. Shortly after that, the macbook started to run slow, the icons changed and look strange. Luckily, I was able to download a file from apple and proceeded to clean the system. 8 files were detected as corrupted and once this problem was fixed, the system was back to normal. Unfortunately though, I’m not sure if the problem resides in my yahoo account or the other pc laptop I used initially. I suspect the latter (pc laptop probably has a virus) so accessing my email account on that pc started the whole mess.

I just realized that the same thing happened to me when my MOM of all people asked me why I’m sending her emails for viagra. It was sent to everyone in my contact list! What do I do?

The first thing to do is change your email password then make sure you log out of your email account. Don’t allow password or login information to be stored in your browser cache. Next run an up to date virus scan on your entire drive. I used Symantic. Download anti-virus updates prior to running scan. Your computer has malicious software causing it to obtain access to your email account. Another thing, shut down your computer when your not using it.

For those of you telling people to change their password and THEN run a virus scan, you’re putting the cart before the horse. Run multiple virus and malware scans (superanti-spyware, malwarebytes, ccleaner, go to http://housecall.trendmicro.com and run a free scan) and THEN change your password when you’re sure the machine you’re on is clean.

If you do have a virus or spyware program on your computer, changing your password before you clean it will just send the new password to whomever hijacked it in the first place.

Also someone mentioned to check your alternate email provided to yahoo. Make sure it is a valid email for yourself. That way, if you change your password, they cannot retrieve it by following the “forgot password” link.

Thanks Randy, I’m gonna try this out. I’m getting tired of my friends emailing me asking why i sending them messages about them inheriting 9.4 Billion from my Nigerian bank account

Same problem is with me. Spa m ming on all my contact book about Some Canadian heath company advertisement on Vigra.

Any one know how to resolve such issues.

There is NO solution to this. Once a spammer (or a PC infected with a mass mailer worm) has your email address there’s nothing you can do to stop messages being sent either to or from your address.

Spammers and mass mailer worms harvest email addresses from distribution lists in email headers on chain emails, or use Trojans to harvest them from infected PC’s hard drives. Spam is then sent out to those harvested addresses, and the sender is spoofed, also using one of those email addresses.

It is unlikely the infected PC is your own PC. It is however possible it’s the PC of one of your contacts who complains of receiving spam messages from you.

All you can do is change your email address and deactivate your old account, and tell your contacts to ignore messages from the old account.

Yeah, now the same thing happened to me, and it freaked me out. I noticed it because I received about 10 Failed to send notifications for some old contacts I have that no longer have activated emails. A few minutes later, these failed notifications disappeared from my Inbox, as if they were deleted to remove all traces.

I asked a friend of mine, and he received the same mail from me, but it was in his junk folder. Another friend of mine had not received a mail from me at all.

I found two extremely malicious malwares (or something) when running add-aware and I’m currently running a few more programs before I restart the pc. I wont change my mail address or anything just yet in case this thing can see what I type.

Wow this is a common problem. I too have this issue with my yahoo account. I have scanned with anti-Virus and ad-ware but its still happening. Not sure if its a computer prob or a yahoo problem. Either way its very bad.

How can it be a malicious programme on the pc itself, if Hotmail and Yahoo in on the internet… The problem ly’s on Hotmail and Yahoo’s side. I access my Hotmail account from all over the world from various PC’s… I’m sure all these PC’s arent infected.

How can I fix this bogus email spam to my hotmail contacts.
(lol I also send the Canadian Viagra stuff)

“Rajat // Apr 7, 2010

Same problem is with me. Spa m ming on all my contact book about Some Canadian heath company advertisement on Vigra”

o_O so what now?

me too! from my AOL acct! but I’ve had this email addres since ‘96 - can’t imagine how many places I’ve got this email addy connected to - it would take me months to figure out how many to contact - bummer!

My email is sending out to my contacts without my knowlege. Concerned spreading a virus. Help!

Been with AOL since 1998 and never had anything like this happen until today! I have AVG, Spyware Blaster, AdAware, CrapCleaner & Windows Firewall so how on earth has it happened and what can I do? I fix pcs but this one has me beat!

I don’t know what to do about it either. As “wlh” points out, I can’t imagine how many places I’m registered at using my Yahoo addy. I can’t just close the account. I did, however, delete my entire contact list … though I rather suspect that’s like closing the barn door after all the horses have escaped.

I’ve run full updated virus scans twice; nothing detected. I’m going to change my alternate e-mail for password hints and then change my password.

If anti-virus doesn’t fix it, you can restore the system to uninstall the scumware: Start/All Programs/Accessories/System Restore
I found my McAfee and Windows Defender disabled right after I noticed the spam coming from my account. I installed Norton and am scanning.

I think it may also have to do with the fact that many people use their email address in various sites and create accounts using their email password (the same password).Also, Many sites (social networking) would try to access your contacts in your account and if you accidentally give them the access, all your contacts can be spammed.

I dealt with this a few weeks ago. Imagine if you send out a invite to everyone in your address book and do not BCC the addresses. Everyone in that disto has your address book now. If one person in that distro has an infected computer the virus can simply mine his inbox and get your address, name in the “From” field, and your address book. Your account never sends out the email, forging “From” information is as old as email itself. Essentially you are screwed on this one. I have a gmail account and a yahoo account. Never happens on gmail but I have noticed that gmail’s spam filter are way more robust than yahoo. If this is what happened to you I know of no way to stop it unless everyone in your address book changes there email addy.

I have had this problem too; everyone in my address book has just received a link to buy viagra, which I obviously did not send. This is highly embarrassing! I use Windows Live Mail to send and receive emails via my Yahoo account, yet there is no trace of ’sent’ emails on in my folders or if I log in to the online version of Yahoo!

I recently joined a website and used the same password as I use for my email account - I wonder if it has been compromised in this way.

I have just scanned with Zonealarm, now I am running Ad-Aware and Windows Defender, nothing has been picked up yet.

This is very embarrassing and really annoying, I don’t want to have to change my email (which I have had for years) because some scum bag is sending out filth in my good name!

This just happened to me from a GMail account. Actually, I couldn’t log into Gmail, it was saying my account had been blocked for “suspicious activity”. I had to have them text me a code to get into my email, and there, I found that my account had send out one of those “Russian URLs” to everyone in my contacts (I usually keep my gmail contact list short for this reason, but there were way more than I realized). However, GMail had blocked it from actually going out , and they all said “Undeliverable”. But, apparently Gmail’s filter had flagged me as a spammer and blocked the account. I have numerous Gmail accounts and so far, none of the others has done this, BUT, it is worthwhile to mention that this Gmail account is the one I have listed as my primary Facebook email, so it could have come through there. For now, I just trimmed my contact list as low as I could, and I’m hoping that Gmail will catch this if it tries again. I don’t even use nor download applications on Facebook, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it came from there.

Just delete all your contacts! You can still get in touch with them by replying to the last email you got from them. Not the best sollution ever but the only one I managed to think of :/

I have this problem also. After reading posts, I took a closer look at my Yahoo Mail. Whatever it is, it will spit out spam as soon as you open up a mail from someone that is a spam. I noticed this because I have several computer running in the same room with different email addresses with notifiers. The instant that a spam is opened up, all the computers in the room are sent a spam from my computer. At times, the Yahoo program will hide your sent mail with an ad and say no sent mail. But, I deleted all y sent mail, opened up a suspicious mail from a friend and then immediately checked my sent mail…sure enough, as soon as an email is accessed, out spits spam. As for a solution, I am stumped. I will continue to look at this. Meanwhile don’t open suspicious mail and delete it immediately.

Just had the same problem, but its deleted all my sent items at the same time. Yahoo mail.
Have changed my password.

Thanks to possible clue for doing the legwork on that. I think I just opened up a stupid email on my blackberry. I deleted right away but the damage is probably already done. The email sounded legit. This is so embarrasing…it’s been sent to enemies, ex-boyfriends, my lawyer and doctor! Does deleting your contacts really help? I can just copy and paste them on to a document, if so.

Thanks to possible clue for doing the legwork on that. I think I just opened up a stupid email on my blackberry. I deleted right away but the damage is probably already done. The email sounded legit. This is so embarrasing…it\’s been sent to enemies, ex-boyfriends, my lawyer and doctor! Does deleting your contacts really help? I can just copy and paste them on to a document, if so.

I simply added an x to every email address in my book. About once a month this “thing” attempts to make a mass mailing. Now I receive all of the email back as undeliverable because of the additional character in the address. Not a complete fix, but keeps friends from getting unwanted email

I had the exact same problem with mine. I had no way to stop it, so I created a new email and notified all my contacts that the old one was no longer from me and to stop paying attention to it. Right now I’m working on trying to figure out if I can delete the account or something.

thank u for all the help guys. im a victim of it as well… doing a virus scan and then changing password for me for nw

Sorry all but no Anti-virus, Spyware or Malware can help you or solve the problem. It stems from your email account providers. An email harvester has hacked their servers and copied contacts. You can only apologize to friends or change your address.

Hey I have the same exact problem! Some Canadian Viagra company sends links to their site to all of my contacts using my email. It just happened a second time but idk how to sue them!! Can anyone actually help?

Im having the same problem. Emailing all my contacts with a link to a Canadian drug site. WHen I check the sent folder there’s nothing there. I hate this!

I have the same problem, my ex got the viagra link and was very confused. I decided to just delete all my contacts and added a fake one to see if I’ll get failed attempts. All of my sent messages are gone (I had quite a few from several months ago). We’ll see how that works!

The same thing happened to me. A link to a “Viagra-for-sale” sight was sent to everyone in my contacts and my sent messages were deleted for the last year. I immediately changed the password. I then ran two different anti-virus programs, and they found nothing. I have not had a problem since, so I assume somehow my original password was compromised. I don’t have a clue how it was done, though. I hadn’t divulged it to anyone, given it up to any web site, etc.

Same problem.. Actually got a response from Yahoo though. Although I think I accidently deleted it or I would post on here what it said. My yahoo address was my first email and I hate to delete it, but I am getting tired of it doing this. I wish I could find who or what was responsible. It’s really aggravating. If I hear something that works, I will post back.

Same issue, but I don’t think deleting all my contacts will help. In my case, I’m getting automated respsonses from places like Lands End, Barnes & Noble, etc, saying “thanks for contacting us” so it is not just sending these to my Yahoo contacts. It’s sending these to anyplace that has my Yahoo e-mail address, which is the one I use for all online shopping, e-newsletter subscriptions, etc. I tried changing my password and that did nothing and I regularly run anti-virus, anti-spyware software so I agree with those that say those will not help.

Same problem is with me. Spa m ming on all my contact book about Some Canadian heath company advertisement on Vigra.

NEED HELP!! Any one know how to resolve such issues???

i’m encountering same problem, Spamming on all my contact book about Viagra advertisement.
PLEASE HELP!

i have this problem too. I think the best solution is add the letter x infront of all email in your add book.

This is crap. Someone has been abusing all of the information on my account!!! HELP PLEASE!

Fredy Marroquin-Rodriguez

I’m having the same problem with the canadian drug company link. It sent to everyone on my contact list which I only found out because of “failed delivery” notifications from some old contacts I had. It didn’t show up in my sent box, and when I ran the virus scan using avira I found malware. But now I’m starting to think it was unrelated because it just happened again and it’s only been about three days! I changed my password, ran more scans, deleted my contacts and added a fake to see if it happens again, and if it does I’m going to shut down my account which I hate because I’ve had this address for 10 years!

Does anyone have any theories on HOW they attacker acquires your address book? It’s easy to spoof an email address, but stealing the address book is the hard part. Note that the only unusual activity that I recall–before I was compromised–was a request to chat (which I foolishly accepted). Is it possible that accepting this contact for chat has someone revealed my address book to that person? If so, that’s the hack.

I noticed that when I tried to log on again, I had a message that MyYahoo page had not loaded correctly and so I needed to refresh the page by clicking on a link. Refreshing through the browser did not fix it, but I did remember having this problem a couple of days ago and hitting the link. I think this “problem loading” page is a phishing site. When I cleared all my history, cache, cookies, etc the browser worked fine again. Changed my email password and no new problems.

Listen, I just sat here for 20 mins reading this post, this is the reason you cant find a solution any more. People cant just shut up and read. If you have this problem, it sucks to be u, but we all dont need to know about it. Your email address is spamming your address book. Right? Viagra. Right? WE KNOW the same problem does not need to be restated 50 times. If you dont have a solution or something that would lead to a solution shut the hell up.