HotMail account has been compromised, worm problem

[Dharitree]

I am facing problem with Hotmail account. It looks that it is compromised. I got reply from many senders that I had sent them some mails. The mail contains information of some product. I had not sent any mail to anyone. It looks there some worm in my account and I cannot clean that. Also there are some mail sent related to sales promotion. How can find the infection and get rid of the same. I think there is a worm in my mail account.

[GARTH]

You must change your password first if you find this kind of issue. You can contact the hotmail customer support for this issue. There might be some spammers who got your mail access and using it for spamming. This are common issues. There is nothing to worry much about the same. You must check for password setting and always use a complex one. I am sure this is a spam issue.

[Taidje]

I had faced the same thing and I had mailed to hotmail people about that. There are some constant emails sent through my account and yet I am not able to find who is doing that. There can be malware or something. I want to know that does there is some kind of online malware detector. If yes then please provide me the link.

[LeonL]

Your account is hacked. I had faced the same thing some months ago. I do not know how that happened but someone has hacked my account. There are were constant emails delivered through my account. I am using a email client on my system. It was really complicated to deal with this kind of issue. I scanned my system but nothing was found. Later on I changed my password and it was stopped. So it looks that the account is being compromised as someone has got my password. You must keep changing your password at regular time interval. This would be helpful for you.

[naniquena]

Apart from that the solution to this problem is: (This is tested and a response from the Hotmail TECH support, if you go to support.live.com they will tell you this).

• Change your password.
• Check if the "Vacation reply" or "Automated reply" it's not ON. And if it's ON delete the content and switch it OFF.

I got hit with this issue as well, but whoever did it, did not delete my contact list. When I started looking into it, I noticed that an autoreply box was checked with this "I've found a great electronics company..." paragraph attached as part of my signature. I of course did not set this up, but what started happening is that anyone who sent me an email received this type of response. I found this by hitting reply one time and saw that I all of a sudden had a signature. Completely frustrating. l also add that since this is the email address I use for more personal stuff, I know who is in my address book so I deleted it. I also went into my email profile and deleted my signature, made sure any out of office would NOT be sent.
Go to Options/more options :

• under Manage your account, click on "Send automated vacation replies"
• make sure you check the box stating "Don't send any vacation replies"
• click save
• under Customize your mail choose Personal e-mail signature
• make sure your signature is what you want it to be (I just deleted the whole thing)

Finally found these post and thank god I am not going crazy. Like most of you I Am sending emails that I didn't actually intend to send. This has been going on a couple of months now but at least its weekly. I intentionally deleted all in my contact list about a month ago thinking that would work in preventing the emails...it didn't. Ran security software up the ying yang and blocked sites where I thought the source maybe coming: IE. EBAY. Following week...another bad send.So thank you guys for the post and took your advice and changing email password to something more complicated, longer, and numbers included. Your also correct that multiple software protection software running will find nothing. I will update next week if I can go a week without the email crap happening.

[SMichael]

This are common. There are many malware which are in your system and users are not ever aware about the same. That is why it is recommended that you keep your system clean and update your antivirus. Fresh virus definition offers more option to deal with the issues. It is might be annoying if you keep on changing the password. It is better if you simple keep a single but powerful so that it is not easily guessable.

[ronaldchughes]

I also have encountered the same email coming from my hotmail although I am having other issues with new virus scans failing to load as well Norton360 doesn't find any problems yet at some point I must have given access to my email otherwise the password would not have been breached. My question for everyone in this is have you allowed facebook to invite the members of your hotmail as I did some time ago. This would have been the only time I allowed access to my email password! Alternatively is anyone else in the position that the password they used for hotmail was also used for another site? Lastly does anyone else have a too many ccSvcHst.exe processes running in in your windows task manager? It appears as though I have more task running than I should? Norton 360 finds a virus each time I scan it says that it has fixed a cookie then the next time I scan it says it has fixed a cookie again. This appears to be a well hidden worm that is running in multiple processes. Help

[oh_stop_it]

I know this is probably too late for you but my husband's email account was recently compromised in this same manner (different spam but very similar wording) and his address book was deleted. Since he uses the laptop, and I prefer the P.C. I was able to work back and forth to try different things between accounts. After trying a number of things, I decided to go into his Hotmail safe list and put my email address in it. This apparently worked because my test email reached his inbox. This means setting up a whole new contact list by manually inserting email addresses in the safe list. By the way, after I was added to his safe list and was put in his contact list, I did not (yet) receive another spam/worm email from his account. I am computer/virus/program illiterate. I did find this site and forum by Googling the problem. Most certainly, I used a number of virus removal tools before working with his email options. (SpyBot S&D, Kaspersky, CA Security virus scan and spam scan).