My hotmail keeps sending random people emails that i have no control over! HELP!?

Question

For the past few months now, my hotmail has been sending emails to people from my account. I have no control over the emails, and do not chose to send them. I think it started when i opened an email i got from someone, which had a link inside, im not sure wether i clicked on the link or not, but ever since then my account has been sending similar emails to people.
Could someone please tell me how to stop this? Its driving me mental! x

Answer 1

By opening and clicking the link in the email you confirmed to a spambot that your email address was valid, so now they fake your email address onto the sender part of an email and send it from anywhere in the world. Best option is to set up a new free email address with hotmail/yahoo/gmail and then abandon your old one and tell your contacts about the change so they can block the old email address. It will eventually get blocked anyway by the spam-filters and you wouldn't be able to send any emails to anyone. The spambots can even send messages through MSN that appear to be from you, even when your offline.



Abandon the email address and put it down to experience.

Answer 2

First off promise yourself that you will never click on any link that comes in an email. If a friend sends an email first call them and ask if they indeed sent the link. Even then, try not to click unless it is important.



You can change your hotmail password. That may (not guaranteed) solve this.



Rahul

Answer 3

Sound like a virus to me. That is something a virus could do.



Download AVG Free (Anti Virus program) and run a whole computer scan.



link: http://download.cnet.com/AVG-Anti-Virus-Free-Edition/3000-2239_4-10320142.html?tag=mncol