This is an occurrence which we have dealt with from either a sender sending out an e-mail stating they had been hacked. Maybe you have been hacked into and needed to find a way to deal with someone getting into your account and sending e-mails that wre never intended to be sent.
You probably wonder, what would cause this, and what can you do about it?
The simple answer is one of two things, either: poor or weak password, or spoofing.
If the problem is your password, it means your e-mail account was hacked. If your account has been spoofed, that means someone has made it appear as though it has been hacked.
There are a variety of reasons why your account was hacked:
1. Your password was easy guessable
2. You entered your information into a phishing site
3. The website where you have your account had a security breach
4. Your hacked account used the same password as a different, breached site.
5. There is spyware on your computer.
How do you tell if your account has been hacked?
1. Recipients of the spam e-mail involves people you know.
2. You attempt to access your account and your password no longer works.
3. You attempt to access the “Forgot Password” link and it does not go to your e-mail
4. Your “Sent Items Folder” has a bunch of spam e-mails you were not aware of sending.
If your e-mail account was hacked, there are several things you need to do.
1. Change your password on the hacked site.
2. Change your password on ANY other sites where you used the same username and password.
3. Change your password on any sties whose information you stored in the hacked account
4. If you have determined you have been affected by spyware, once it is removed, you will need to change ALL your passwords for any online accounts and follow procedures for recovering from identity theft.
5. IF you cannot follow any of these steps due to your account information and details have been changed, you need to contact support for the website which provides your account so you can regain control.
There are two ways to discover if your account was spoofed.
1. Get a copy of the e-mail, including headers, and check the original IP address to discover if it is not one you have been using.
2. If you have received bounced messages from several e-mail addresses for people you do not know.
Unfortunately, IF your account was spoofed, those individuals created an e-mail which had fake details (typically the “From” or “Reply-to” address), and there is not much you can do to stop it. What you can do is quite likely to be ineffective; however, you need to do the following steps.
1. Get the IP address from the e-mail header
2. Contact the ISP for the address
3. Request for it to be blocked.
Although, the spammer could be using a different IP address the enxt day, and the ISP could ignore it, or deny your request.
This is a situation which is a big reminder for computer security to be more about protecting your computer from malware. There is a lot of date and information on your computer which is valuable to hackers, which do not need to go to a lot of effort to obtain it from you.
There is up side to things, it can be easy to protect your information by taking the steps to make things more secure. Run programs which check for viruses frequently. Do maintenance checks with Nashville Computer Guru on a regular scheduled basis. Being proactive with these steps will put you in a proactive state to make getting hacked less likely.