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[patty1934]

I keep having spam sent to my whole addressbook, does anyone have the solution to stop this?
Thanks

 

[corkyg]

There are several solutions. I use a "white list" only for email. No spam accepted. There are spam filters as well. And you can use a restricted email address for friends only, and have another for "public."

I do that and then check my POP box with Mail Washer Pro, (http://www.firetrust.com/) and delete all unwanted email (includes FWD crap from friends!) on the POP3 server. Spam never reaches my machine.

 

[BoomerD]

I keep having spam sent to my whole addressbook, does anyone have the solution to stop this?
Thanks

Without knowing exactly what's causing this, it's going to be very difficult to prescribe an exact solution...but here are a few possible programs that MIGHT help:

Spybot S&D
http://www.safer-networking.org/en/mirrors/index.html

McAfee Stinger (finds some of the more common viruses)
http://download.cnet.com/McAfee-Avert-Stinger/3000-2239_4-10552057.html

A couple of free tools from Norton:
http://security.symantec.com/sscv6/home.asp?langid=ie&venid=sym&plfid=24&pkj=DOFGXIBVEMBQAUWZKTK


http://forums.anandtech.com/forumdisplay.php?f=41

You don't tell us if you have any type of spyware/virus protection...
Microsoft Security Essentials isn't a bad product...for the price.
http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/security_essentials/default.aspx

 

[patty1934]

I have McAfee and SpuBot S&D Windows Defender. Thanks for your help

 

[Harvey]

I keep having spam sent to my whole addressbook, does anyone have the solution to stop this?
Thanks

It sounds like your e-mail account was hijacked. This is common on some of the major free e-mail providers like aol, hotmail, etc. I've seen this happen to several of my friends.

If so, the best solution is to start a new account (or five or more), notify the provider and ask them to shut down your account. From your new address, you should write everyone in your address book to give them your new address and to warn them to block all further e-mail from your old address.

When you send this message, be sure to enter every address using BCC (Blind Carbon Copy). When you do, each recipient sees only his own address and no other. If you don't know how to do this, look for BCC in the "Help" section of your e-mail program.

Sending e-mail that shows such lists of recipients is extremely dangerous to you, all of those whose addresses are shown and any of their friends to whom they may forward the same message. Many computer viruses and spyware programs scan the inbox of infected computers to "harvest" all addresses in such headers and send themselves to those addresses in the background. Even if your computer is not infected, if any of your recipients' machines is infected, or any of the machines of any of their subsequent recipents is infected, the virus will be sent back to every address shown in the forwarded message they receive. If you send mass mailings, not using BCC and following other safe e-mail practices effectively makes you a kind of cyber Typhoid Mary.

Further steps to help prevent this kind of problem:

1. When forwarding messages you have received from others, manually strip all previous address headers from the message before forwarding them. This may require cutting and pasting the message you want to send to a new e-mail, but anything worth sending is worth sending safely.

2. Send a message with this info to any friends who send you messages openly showing a list of recipients.

It is possible that your address book was compromised by spyware using this same trick or another means so you should scan any messages on your hard drive for viruses and spyware. At this point, it doesn't matter how how it happened because whatever damage it caused is already done. In the message from your new address, you should also advise your recipients to scan their inbox and entire system for malware.

Good luck.

 

[Lanyap]

Is it being sent from your email account? Check your sent folder. Someone may have your email password. Change your email password.

 

[patty1934]

Thank you do much, I called msn and they told me pretty much what you did about changing the password. I hope it works.