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I've had these emails from two of my contacts - Canadian "medical supplies" and some sort of employment scam.
It seems to be going around.
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I could have a penis the size of a whale that would be permanently erect with the amount ov Viagra I get offered, mark them as Phishing and don't open them.
If your friends have all been sent scam emails that look as if they've come from you, change your password
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Is it a Hotmail a/c? I ask because it seems this happens a lot with Hotmail email addresses. So many of my friends list have had their a/c seemingly taken over but some sort of robot sending out nasty mails
~For most of them changing their password had the desired effect of stopping any more
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I think you misunderstand was phishing is.
It is where you are sent an email with a link in it to a web site, say your bank, but clicking on the link takes you to a "fake" site that looks like your bank.
Logging on to this "fake" web site gives away your userid and password, allowing someone else to log on tot he REAL site using your userid and password.
My guess is someone found out your password (do you use the same password to logon to other web sites?) and logged on and sent an email out to all your contacts.
You should ALWAYS use a different password for your email system than you use to logon to web sites.
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no not phished, but change your log on and maybe delete your address book?
i just use 'reply' functions now!
cath x
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Question Author
Thanks everyone
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Sounds like you've been hacked. Change your password immediately...
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A modern Norton (aka Symantec) Antivirus will stop most of the malware problems providing that you keep it up to date. Do click on the icon on the System Tray and check.
If the mail items are not in your "Sent Items" you have NOT been directly hacked.
Changing your email password will make you feel better and stop a genuine hack.
What is more likely is that a spammer has guessed or harvested email addresses and given you the impression that you have been hacked. We are talking billions of crap email per day (they don't care whether the email address is valid .. the try them all).
As an experiment I have set up an email address which does not include any word in any language. No spam after nearly two years.
I bet if I enrol this email address on any website anywhere on the planet or let Google see it) I will get spam within minutes.
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Question Author
Thanks MEthyl great help and reassuring!
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An earlier post mentioned Microsoft HotMail. Yahoo and Google and more are similarly vulnerable.
If you have a password which has few characters and contains real words or common phrases, you can be hached easily. For example I came across the password "blink182" (popular band name and very popular password) amongst many thousands of similar common passwords hard-coded into the program code for a virus. The list started with "password123" and contained "pass123" and "haircut100" to name but a few.
A totally obscure long password based on a shape on the keyboard is much more secure.
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I forgot to mention insecure passwords which every mainstream virus knows:
bbc1, bbc2 ..., xfactor2011 ..., 24children, channel1, channel2 ... ,
"Let's be careful out there".
Ignoring the fact that this quote came from "Hill Street Blues", please avoid obvious TV connections such as "hawaii500" when choosing a password.
Any variation of "olympics2012" "2012olympic" etc. does not stand a chance whatsoever.
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I like 'Lastpass' otherwise my head would explode, or I'd have to write every password down on a piece of paper which would rather defeat the object of it all.
E-mails from the bank more often than not are hooky. I get them all the time asking for my banking online password via one scam or another. I send them Mickey Mouse details and like to think of them trying to log in to an HSBC account with the username 'bigtits' and an equally risque password when in actual fact my account is with RBS and internet banking has not been set up.
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My late husband's account was hacked and "he" was sending these stupid things to everyone in his address book a month after he died.
This was quite distressing at first but I changed his password and they stopped.
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You shouldn't answer them at all, spikey, even with false details - it lets the phishers know that your email address is live...
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as others have said: not phished, hacked. Someone (possibly a robot) has found your password and got into your account. Change the password, preferably to a more complicated one, and you should be ok. (Worked for me.)
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I don't reply, I just follow their link on a public computer in a cafe. When asked for my name I enter something silly like Throatwobbler Mangrove or Screaming Lord Such.
At home I delete the buggers immediately.
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Ah - but surely the link comes into your email account, public or not?
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I don't really care, I've no money to be stolen and if they want to see who my friends are on Facebook they can save themselves half an hour and go visit Strangeways prison
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