# Worm? Somebody emailed all my contacts



## 6126 (May 9, 2010)

Someone emailed everyone in my address book today  Just grateful it was my personal email and not my business. I ran a virus scan (Norton) and all it found was one tracking cookie. I changed my password. Not sure how this happened? Dont know a whole lot about computers. Been Googling a few programs to clean it up but havent decided what to use. Any suggestions?


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## PatsPainting (Mar 4, 2010)

Woodland said:


> Someone emailed everyone in my address book today  Just grateful it was my personal email and not my business. I ran a virus scan (Norton) and all it found was one tracking cookie. I changed my password. Not sure how this happened? Dont know a whole lot about computers. Been Googling a few programs to clean it up but havent decided what to use. Any suggestions?


is this a hotmail account?

if so, most likely it will happen again. Was happening to my buddy for few months, he tried everything

try http://www.malwarebytes.org/

Pat


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## 6126 (May 9, 2010)

It was sent from my yahoo account


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## PatsPainting (Mar 4, 2010)

Woodland said:


> It was sent from my yahoo account


sorry, it was yahoo not hotmail i was thinking about. What kind of spam did it send to your contacts?

you can google this, you will see this happens all the time

Pat


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## 6126 (May 9, 2010)

It sent a few different emails with attachments. "Especially for you" "Just for you" "Its for you" "Nice present" "From the bottom of my heart" Wen to about a 100 people. What sucks is it went to both my parents, close friends and several ex girlfriends I didnt even realize were still in my contacts.


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## PatsPainting (Mar 4, 2010)

Woodland said:


> It sent a few different emails with attachments. "Especially for you" "Just for you" "Its for you" "Nice present" "From the bottom of my heart" Wen to about a 100 people. What sucks is it went to both my parents, close friends and several ex girlfriends I didnt even realize were still in my contacts.



I take it your ex girlfriends went and opened those suckers up. Next few days their going to be sending you some spam right back.

Freaking sucks - all you can do is create a email and say yours was hijacked, please disregard those emails.

Pat


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## JNLP (Dec 13, 2007)

After seeing this happen with friends, I'm always paranoid of this happening to me so I don't keep any contacts saved directly in my email accounts. Use a different password for everything & change them all often. Even if it's as simple as changing the last # of it from 1, to 2, to 3, every 2 weeks.


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## 6126 (May 9, 2010)

Heard of it happening to others. Its a first for me. Seems like someone told me one time you set your first contact up as an "A" without a real email. When the worm fails to send that one it stops. No idea if thats true or exactly how it works? No idea how this happened to me? Im careful what I open. Doing the scan From the link Pat posted right now. Hasnt found anything yet.


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## VanDamme (Feb 13, 2010)

Mike, Along w/Malwarebytes, give free Avast Antivirus a try. I really like it. I have never had a virus on my computer that I didn't put it there first to test it.

http://www.avast.com/free-antivirus-download


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## bikerboy (Sep 16, 2007)

It happened to me, one of my customers and another member here last year. All claimed that "(insert name here) found a great place to get (insert product here)"

I change my passwords every month or so now. (which reminds me)


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## chrisn (Jul 15, 2007)

Just to add to the confusion , Norton sucks:yes:


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## straight_lines (Oct 17, 2007)

Did you install malwarebytes? Do so and run the scan. If you have this problem again then you need to get serious as you do have an infection. 

I would start with hijackthis. If those programs can't get it, I would reformat and reinstall windows. For sure way to get rid of any malware.


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## 6126 (May 9, 2010)

After a full system scan with Norton nothing came up, I installed malwarebytes and did a full scan and nothing came up, then I installed avast, removed Norton and ran another full scan and once again nothing came up.


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