Spam from Yahoo account, but odd

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Level 1

39 points

Spam from Yahoo account, but odd

I am puzzled by a recent spamming incident involving my Yahoo mail account.

Spam emails were sent to my contact list with my name/address in the FROM field. There were two groups of emails, one that appeared to be from an I.P. in Santiago, Chile, and the other, about an hour later, using an I.P. in the Ukraine. Surprisingly, the spam emails were in my Sent Mail folder. Normally, I would take this as clear evidence that my account had been hacked into.

However... Yahoo's "Recent Login Activity" shows no strange or unexpected logins, and definitely none for the time period when the spam emails were sent. If my account had been hacked, wouldn't they have to have logged into the account to send an email?

I know it's easy to spoof the sender of an email -- is there a way to spoof in such a way that a copy ends up in the sender's Yahoo Sent Mail folder? Is there any way someone got access to my Yahoo Contact List without signing on to my account?

I thought I was fairly familiar with the basics of Internet security, email and spam and spoofing and such, but I'm in over my head on this one. I downloaded Sophos Anti-Virus and it's halfway through a scan now, I doubt it will find anything. Yes, I just changed my Yahoo password.

Thanks for any ideas/suggestions/insight.

iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.7)

Posted on Nov 20, 2012 7:10 PM

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Answer 1

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ethereality

Level 1

64 points

Nov 21, 2012 5:16 AM in response to mwegner

I'm not an expert in this area, but I think it's possible for your computer to be compromised, not only Yahoo's web servers: One could gain illegitimate access to your yahoo account or to your computer. Perhaps you're saying this problem only involves Yahoo's web servers, that you don't send email from your computer (e.g. the Mail program). In that case, your problem really concerns Yahoo, not Apple, and you should be asking there, rather than here -- unless this community is casual such that it answers questions unrelated to the forum.

Perhaps a more direct answer to your question: I would not be surprised if someone gaining such access to your yahoo account bypassed Yahoo's login system so that nothing shows up in the 'Recent Login Activity'. After all, their chat rooms are dominated by spambots regardless of the Captcha ('type the text you see') implementation.

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Answer 2

mwegner Author

Level 1

39 points

Nov 21, 2012 8:27 AM in response to ethereality

Thanks for the ideas. I asked here because I wasn't sure where to ask -- Yahoo Message Groups are a zoo. I decided to post a question on Yahoo Answers.

As expected, the Sophos Anti-Virus scan showed nothing. No other spam since this one incident yesterday afternoon, but I am still puzzled at how someone got access to my contact list and sent email from my account without actually signing on to the account. As you suggest, it's possible that someone gained access to Yahoo's servers directly.

I know that Apple's Snow Leopard forum is not the best place to ask about this problem, but where would one go to ask? Is there an active forum somewhere that might be able to address this?

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