my email address being used to send viruses!!!

[dionne]

hello all

i recently noticed that i started receiving virus-ridden
email from my own hotmail address that is also sent to
others.
ppl think that i send these email to them, so i don't
know if my address book was also hijacked.

the one thing all these email have in common is that they
besides the fact that are all virus-ridden i suppose is
that the list of others attemped recipienys shows up
spanish nicknames which is odd.

is there any other way to get rid of this problem without
losing my account...i have a lot of subscriptions and
real friends attached to this email address.

dionne

[Kevin]

There isn't much you can do. Make sure you never open attachments from
anyone without first saving the attachment to a folder where you can scan it
with your anti-virus software. Always run a firewall and some good malware
scanning software. Your Hotmail account is being used to send emails
containing viruses or other nasty software packages. This isn't your fault.
You may want to use one of your other email accounts to send your friends a
warning message to not open any Hotmail that purports to be sent by you
without scanning attachments first. In the last few weeks I have seen my
Junk Mail folder on my Hotmail account start to fill with these infected
emails.

"dionne" > wrote in message
...
> hello all
>
> i recently noticed that i started receiving virus-ridden
> email from my own hotmail address that is also sent to
> others.
> ppl think that i send these email to them, so i don't
> know if my address book was also hijacked.
>
> the one thing all these email have in common is that they
> besides the fact that are all virus-ridden i suppose is
> that the list of others attemped recipienys shows up
> spanish nicknames which is odd.
>
> is there any other way to get rid of this problem without
> losing my account...i have a lot of subscriptions and
> real friends attached to this email address.
>
> dionne

[Ronnie Vernon MVP]

dionne wrote:
> hello all
>
> i recently noticed that i started receiving virus-ridden
> email from my own hotmail address that is also sent to
> others.
> ppl think that i send these email to them, so i don't
> know if my address book was also hijacked.
>
> the one thing all these email have in common is that they
> besides the fact that are all virus-ridden i suppose is
> that the list of others attemped recipienys shows up
> spanish nicknames which is odd.
>
> is there any other way to get rid of this problem without
> losing my account...i have a lot of subscriptions and
> real friends attached to this email address.
>

If you have scanned your system and you are sure that it is not infected,
don't worry about it.

The way the current batch of worms and viruses work is they access the
address book on the infected system and then start sending their payload
showing a return address of one of the email accounts located in that
address book. All this means is that your address is in an address book on
someone else's infected computer.

--
Ronnie Vernon
Microsoft MVP
Windows Shell/User

Please reply to the newsgroup so all may benefit.
http://www.dts-l.org
http://www.mvps.org

[S.Sengupta]

Hi,
if you have no virus in your system then there is nothing to
panic.Use/adjust your junk filter.
regards,
ssg MS-MVP
pronetworks.org

dionne wrote:
> hello all
>
> i recently noticed that i started receiving virus-ridden
> email from my own hotmail address that is also sent to
> others.
> ppl think that i send these email to them, so i don't
> know if my address book was also hijacked.
>
> the one thing all these email have in common is that they
> besides the fact that are all virus-ridden i suppose is
> that the list of others attemped recipienys shows up
> spanish nicknames which is odd.
>
> is there any other way to get rid of this problem without
> losing my account...i have a lot of subscriptions and
> real friends attached to this email address.
>
> dionne

[Alex Nichol]

dionne wrote:

>
>i recently noticed that i started receiving virus-ridden
>email from my own hotmail address that is also sent to
>others.
>ppl think that i send these email to them, so i don't
>know if my address book was also hijacked.
>
>the one thing all these email have in common is that they
>besides the fact that are all virus-ridden i suppose is
>that the list of others attemped recipienys shows up
>spanish nicknames which is odd.

A large number of viruses these days pick up the address book from the
machine they have infected, and choose one address to send themselves
to, and another as the one it has apparently come from. This is what
has happened - someone with your name in their book is infected. And it
is near impossible to find out who. Some AV programs seem quite unaware
of this, even now, and send back automatic complaints to the one machine
one can safely say was *not* the source


--
Alex Nichol MS MVP (Windows Technologies)
Bournemouth, U.K. (remove the D8 bit)