I am getting Emails from "Postmaster@mail.hotmail.com"

inimitabl wrote:

I do realize this is some sort of Malware that uses a keylogger .

I'm quite sure that it is not, as no such malware is currently known to exist. If there is a keylogger on your Mac then it was put there by somebody with physical access to your computer or local network.

The only thing the spammer needs is to harvest your e-mail address in order to send these out, along with your contact list, in your case.

Check the sent mail folder to see if they were sent from your account or not.

Hotmail accounts are routinely broken into, so yes, you are not alone in this.

This can be a quite common occurence in Hotmail, Yahoo,

Gmail, or actually pretty much any other mail service.

Mail hijacking by spammers is somewhat common.

Given time, it may just go away but if not, you may need

to discontinue use of that address, inform the powers that be

of what has occurred and create a new address.

It is nothing on the Mac itself that is the problem it is the

vulnerability of the mail servers to such things.

inimitabl wrote:

ok . they are not in my "sent" folder on my mac or in my hotmail accnt. / / problem is this "thing" sends out an Email to whoever I contact ie. apple support was sent one this morning ! /// so what I'm gathering is it does not need my password because i've changed that twice and your saying there's not a keylogger . so it doesn't need my password , it just keeps sending them out to sites that have contacted me in the past and will continue to send them to these sites (even if they don't go thru) in the future. I am not happy with changing my Email address at all. seems like that's just giving in,,,,saying ok , you got me , you win, I'll just change my Email address and wait for you to find me again !!! Unacceptable !!!

You'll need to log your dissatisfaction through the proper

channels for Hotmail/Microsoft for it is their service that

was comprimised.

As for it happenning again, I won't say it never will, but odds are

it won't.

If the email is not in your sent folder on your Mac or in any folder in the Hotmail account when you login via a web browser, then it is likely that the email messages are not being sent from your account.

As woodmeister50explained, someone is pretending to be you. There is little you can do to stop them, and there is little you can do to stop receiving the error messages when the person sends incorrectly addressed email that is pretending to be you.

If the person is sending email always to people you have just sent email, then there might be a problem. They could be watching your network and grabbing the "send to" email addresses that way. But I think it is unlikely.

It's more likely that you're a target because you use a free service and that the person is just randomly targeting other addresses, some of which happen to be ones that you've also sent email to (i.e., Apple support).

This is annoying, but it is a fact of modern life. The only way to reduce the likelihood of it happening it is to pay for email service with your own domain name. You should report it to Hotmail, too.

preludio wrote:

This is annoying, but it is a fact of modern life. The only way to reduce the likelihood of it happening it is to pay for email service with your own domain name. You should report it to Hotmail, too.

This helps, but is still not totally immune. I had this happen

with a support email address with a website I was once

running. Had to disable that account and create a new one.

I guess it all depends on the robustness of the hosts email

server. As in my case, there was a flaw found in the mail

server that allowed this to happen.

However, these "attacks" are random, hit and miss activities.

There are no guaranties that that it can never happen, but

odds are it probably won't.

It's not malware.

What's going on is one of two things. One possibility would be e-mail spoofing. Spammers almost never send messages from a legit address. They usually fake the From line, adding someone else's e-mail address there. You could be the lucky victim. Of course, that wouldn't explain those messages only going to people you have contacted, but as you haven't given us many details, I'm unsure that this isn't simply coincidence that you're misinterpreting.

The other possibility would be that a hacker still has access to your account. I'm not familiar with Hotmail, but some free e-mail services have features that can provide a hacker a back door. For example, on GMail, there is a setting that allows you to grant access to other people... so once a hacker has access to your GMail account, they can set it so that they can get back in any time, and changing your password will not help one bit. Hotmail may have some similar weakness.

It could also be that your account is getting hacked repeatedly. Hotmail accounts are known for being easily hacked, though I don't know whether this is an inherent weakness in Hotmail or just due to having a large population of unsavvy users who use weak passwords. In any case, it's a high-profile target. Are you using secure passwords or weak passwords? Are you frequently accessing your Hotmail account over an unsecured wireless network?

I get email from postmaster@