email virus WhatsApp - sending itself to all in my address book

There are no know viruses for Macs at this time. What makes you think there's a problem? Can you describe it in detail and include a screenshot of what you're experiencing? Are you experiencing this with Mail on your Mac or with mail at the iCloud.com site?

Also download and run Etrecheck. Copy and paste the results into your reply. It's a diagnostic tool that was developed by one of the most respected users here in the ASC to help identify the more obvious culprits.

If something is sending messages via your iCloud e-mail, your account - and thus your Apple ID - has probably been hacked. See:

What to do if your Apple ID has been hacked

(Fair disclosure: I may receive compensation from links to my sites, TheSafeMac.com and AdwareMedic.com, in the form of buttons allowing for donations. Donations are not required to use my site or software.)

Hi, a received a WhatsApp fake email from a friend and was apprehensive about opening it due to the misspelling of the content. I checked with the sender and they did not send it. I have attached a screenshot of the email in question. My friend says it is being sent to all their contacts so i guess its the same problem you have got. I'm not sure at this stage whether it is a WhatsApp related hack or iCloud.

It would be good to know what this is all about.

The sender's email address is my friends @me address and the subject is "Trust me on this"

I got one of those last week. It was obviously a scam since I don't have that app.

My Mum got this on her ipad 4 and opened it and it then tried to send it to all her contacts. Her email provider actually blocked all the emails from going through but will this thing have infected her ipad in some way? is there any way to check and/or get rid of it

WhatsApp is not a virus, it's a messaging service and after you install it an email is sent to all of your contacts asking them to jin.

Read the directions before you install anything.

iCloud has nothing to do with WhatsApp (which had to be installed by the user) so who else has access to your Mac

Its an email that you receive which looks like the picture above and when you press play the thing then replicates itself by sending emails to your entire contact list - its not actually anything to do with whatsapp itself. My mum has already opened this and it has already got into her email. She has only opened it on her ipad, she does not have a mac, what i want to know is whether we need to do anything to remove this thing from the ipad

I've had this as well, and have had my e mail account(yahoo) closed down. I need to call to reset password but do I need to do anything else on my iPad or iPhone to get rid of it? Thanks

alisonfromchelmsford wrote:

My mum has already opened this and it has already got into her email. She has only opened it on her ipad, she does not have a mac, what i want to know is whether we need to do anything to remove this thing from the ipad

The only thing you have to do to remove it is delete the e-mail. Receiving an e-mail is not an indication that your iPad has been hacked or compromised in any way. It just means someone has sent you an e-mail, and an e-mail cannot do anything to infect or hack your iPad. In this case, it's a scam e-mail. If it's coming from someone you know, alert them to the problem, as their e-mail account has been hacked.

If you find that your account is sending these e-mail messages, as indicated by dina.allen in the title of this discussion, then your e-mail account probably has been compromised.

Forgot to mention, if your e-mail account has been compromised, you need to change the password. E-mail accounts don't get "infected," they just get hacked, meaning that hackers gain access to the account. Changing the password should, in most cases, be enough to lock the hackers out, but check with your e-mail provider about what other steps may be necessary in the case of their particular system.

I'm pretty sure its not a hacking situation.

Once you click on the link in the email your laptop gets infected with malware that runs a script with the purpose to forward the malicious email to all contacts.

Your @me account becomes blocked, i am assuming from the mass spam emails that had been sent from your account.

So far i only know of users with @me accounts so unaware how it impacts MS users.

My opinion is to re-install the OS if you did click on the link incase your computer is added to a cybercrime network, which they could use to collect data or remotely lock your computer.

IIt's not a hacking situation she pressed on the play button, it opened something about weight loss in Safari and fired off emails to everyone in her contacts. This was in an iPad, she doesn't use a laptop or any other device. As it has already managed to access her contacts through the ipad presumably this virus (I think it's actually a Trojan) needs to be removed?

SEJH wrote:

Once you click on the link in the email your laptop gets infected with malware that runs a script with the purpose to forward the malicious email to all contacts.

Nope. There is no known method to install malware on a Mac simply by clicking on a link. There's also no known Mac malware that uses the machine to send out spam. The intent very well may be to infect Windows machines, but not Macs. If you're a Mac, iPhone or iPad user, and your e-mail account is sending these e-mails, that account has been hacked.

I received that very same WhatsApp email from a friend; I dropped by later this evening the help him out, fully thinking that it was coming from his PC. But no, he was using his wife's iPad.

He was using the Gmail app; none of the contacts in the iPad address book where used.

It is in fact his Gmail contacts that were used (all 918 of them) to email the spam emails.

I find it surprising that Gmail allows JavaScript(?) to scan and use all of the Gmail contacts to do a mass spam....