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[nenjin]

So yeah. Sign in today and find a bunch of delivery status notification failures, and a lot of "WTF is this" emails from contacts.

I've already changed my password, but that doesn't leave me feeling all that secure (This is Hotmail.) Are there any other steps I can take to weed out this intruder?

[Aramco]

MAKE YOUR PASSWORD 1000000 CHARACTERS LONG.

[Evilgrim]

Change literally everything?

[Vector]

Get a new email address somewhere that isn't hotmail.

[nenjin]

Get a new email address somewhere that isn't hotmail.

I was waiting, my good woman, for someone to say that. I didn't think it'd be you though! I have alternate email accounts, hotmail is just the one I've used reflexively. I don't think using Gmail would have prevented this.

[Vector]

I was waiting, my good woman, for someone to say that. I didn't think it'd be you though! I have alternate email accounts, hotmail is just the one I've used reflexively. I don't think using Gmail would have prevented this.

Heh.  Well, doesn't that just imply that you should strengthen your password, then?  I was just wondering if hotmail's security questions and so on were particularly weak, because if they are it implies that you might want to use a different ESP.

[nenjin]

Yeah, I strengthened my password after I changed it, too. I just feel like I should notify Hotmail, or something, in the event it's well and truly compromised, rather than just closing my account straight up. But apparently they don't have an avenue for that really.

[Pillow_Killer]

Ummm... whats the point of changing the password if you are getting spam? Your adress is on the net, get a new one.

[nenjin]

Read again bucko.

[Azzuro]

You might want to change your security "what-if-I-forgot-my-password" question, because there's a possibility that your account might have been compromised through that avenue.

[Osmosis Jones]

Hotmail has a problem; it stores it's password in a plaintext file on your computer. Ergo, a virus can easily access it. You might want to run a THOROUGH anti-malware scan. Once that is complete, change your password. Changing before then just means the virus picks the info up again.

[nenjin]

Yeah, this little incident reminded me I hadn't gotten Spybot S&D and Hijackthis yet. Spybot came up clean....HJS came up with a ton of "File Missing" reports...which doesn't make me feel good, but isn't didn't raise any immediate red flags.

[ILikePie]

Hotmail has a problem; it stores it's password in a plaintext file on your computer. Ergo, a virus can easily access it. You might want to run a THOROUGH anti-malware scan. Once that is complete, change your password. Changing before then just means the virus picks the info up again.

How the hell does an email client have access to your computer? Unless it's one of those silly outlook variants you need to download in order to use.

[Grakelin]

Delete all computer files, burn apartment with gasoline. If they take you alive, you'll have to swallow the cyanide pill.

[Shades]

Ummm... whats the point of changing the password if you are getting spam? Your adress is on the net, get a new one.

Read again bucko.

Actually Pillow killer is probably right here. The most common cause of the problem you get is that a spam server is using your address as the sender address. Any notifications of failure go back to you because as far as the mail servers are concerned that is who it came from, and obviously peoples replies do too for the same reason.

Unless the people emailed where all people on your address book it's unlikely it was a compromised account and it's just that your address is on one of the many lists as a valid sender for whatever mail server has been compromised and is sending. Unfortunately this makes it hard to 'fix' as well.