Hacked Address Book?

Question

Level 1

9 points

Hacked Address Book?

I am still on 10.5 (***** as Chrome is no longer updating browsers for this version). My iMac cannot update to newer version.

But anywho.... I received a spam email wilh a link from my cousin's email address a month ago. Just deleted it and told her about it. But now I've received the same type of spam email for 2 other people that I know. I am beginning to think that my mail address book has been hacked. How do I check and see if it is? Just too strange that 3 mail accounts from friends send me the same type of spam email.

I use spam sieve, but it doesn't catch the ones from my friend's email addresses.

I never click on a link, open a document or go to websites that at suspicious. I have been very careful; but apparently not careful enough.

Any advice/suggestions would be appreciated.

Thanks.

Patrice

iMac Intel Dual, Mac OS X (10.4.5)

Posted on Jul 11, 2012 1:46 PM

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Answer 1

Jul 11, 2012 2:16 PM in response to mac-newbie

Is your email address on any public web sites? - Do a Google search.

You or somebody you know could have some form of malware - such things were very common on Windows computers a few years ago.

Apart from this I doubt that anybody has hacked your computer.

Are you on a secure network with a firewall? Most people are.

I assume you have any wireless protected by a very long password.

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Answer 2

mac-newbie Author

Level 1

9 points

Jul 11, 2012 2:44 PM in response to Neville Hillyer

Hi,

I have about 8 email addressed. Some are on websites when we do postings for our charity. Some people that have my email address sometimes send out emails to all their friends in the cc field instead of the BCC. I always tell them to remove my email address from such a public emailing. But it still happens.

Yes, I have a router with a firewall which requires me to add Mac addresses to allow a conenction. The password is 9 numbers long.

Patrice

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Answer 3

Jul 11, 2012 3:03 PM in response to mac-newbie

You could check to see if the spam related passwords are all on the same web site. If so it is almost certain that an automatic email harvester has picked them up and sold them around the world. Email harvesting from the web costs very little and can collect millions of passwords.

Most people use disposable passwords for web sites that insist on having them.

If you edit the site you can deter harvesters by encoding the password or replacing @ with at etc.

The most effective deice I have found is to use an image so anybody wishing to use it has to type what they see - better still if you use JavaScript to delay image display let me know if you want details of this.

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Answer 4

Jul 11, 2012 3:35 PM in response to Neville Hillyer

oops - for "spam related passwords" please read spam related email addresses

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Answer 5

mac-newbie Author

Level 1

9 points

Jul 11, 2012 3:58 PM in response to Neville Hillyer

The problem is not just spam, but spam from people that are in my address book.

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Answer 6

Jul 11, 2012 4:47 PM in response to mac-newbie

Are the addresses of these people on public web pages? It is important to check this.

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Answer 7

mac-newbie Author

Level 1

9 points

Jul 11, 2012 4:57 PM in response to Neville Hillyer

I have no idea. I just know that I have had 3 spam emails from 3 people in my address book. All of their spoofed email addresses have similiar spam messages.

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Answer 8

Jul 12, 2012 5:55 AM in response to mac-newbie

I have no idea. I just know that I have had 3 spam emails from 3 people in my address book. All of their spoofed email addresses have similiar spam messages.

It is in your interest to check this by a simple Google search for the email addresses.

There are several ways this can happen including:

Email addresses are on the public web - perhaps all on the same page
Somebody has you and the others in their address book and their computer has malware
An ISP or mail provider one of you use has been hacked

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