e-mail has been hacked, how do I clean it up?
our email account has been hacked, how do I clean it up?
iMac, Mac OS X (10.6.8)
Hi, DRoyT,
How do you know it has been hacked? What led you to believe that?
6 replies
My wife, on her account, had some fictitious notice from "Oprah" sent to some of her friends at a time when she was actually sleeping, and now when she tries to get on to her homepage of Yahoo, she gets a notice that Safari can't establish a secure connection with Yahoo.
Thank you for the information.
One of you may have unwittingly installed some malware on your computer. You will first want to remove the malware. There are at least two schools of thought expressed by experienced users here in this Apple community regarding malware and popups.
One school primarily uses free application(s); the second school requires no additional software and just some simple steps on your part.
First read these (of many threads) discussions. Don't respond to anything in them yet.
Yosemite OS X & MacKeeper I can't unistall
Got a malware on OS X Yosemite, how do I get rid of it?
Pop up problems in Safari on OS X Yosemite!
Also see these Apple notes:
Remove unwanted adware that displays pop-up ads and graphics on your Mac - Apple Support
Safari 8 (Yosemite): Security pane of Safari preferences
OS X Yosemite: Protect your Mac from malware
Decide which method to use and clean your Mac first.
Thanks for your reply. I went into extensions and don't have any listed. I have a 10.6.8 version of Mac, if that makes any difference on the solution.
Thanks again for the help.
Did you look for some possible downloaded items listed here in this tech document?
Remove unwanted adware that displays pop-up ads and graphics on your Mac - Apple Support
Quite often, it is also simply someone stealing your email address from any site online and/or one of your friends' hacked into accounts and using that legitimate address to send out mass spam emails. Using a legit address gets them through any spam filters that the recipients might have set up. That happens frequently and selling valid email addresses online is big business. I've had my Yahoo account hacked into several times; I am now getting spam emails FROM me TO me, which takes the cake.
In any case, you can change your password; however, since they already have the address, the only way to be sure is to delete that email account - establish another and use a very difficult password for it.
she gets a notice that Safari can't establish a secure connection with Yahoo.
I don't believe that is related to the other issue; instead, your OS is no longer being updated with security patches (neither will that Safari version), so it could have something to do with that.
e-mail has been hacked, how do I clean it up?