Virgil

They may have just hacked your Yahoo account. If you use the same password on Yahoo elsewhere on your computer than they may try to access other aspects of your computer. I would try contacting Yahoo first about it, and if you have used the same password anywhere else might be a good idea to change it, and just keep an eye on things and see if it appears anything else is being messed with.

Thanks DM. How does one contact Yahoo? I don't have a clue.

I do not belong to Yahoo, but there should be somewhere on your Yahoo page something that either says contact, or Help which should provide you a way to get in touch with them.

Maybe if anyone else has Yahoo they will no better where to find this, but hopefully if you just look around, you will see it. Usually it is either at the top or bottom of the page of most sites.

You should first change your password and security questions on your Yahoo account. In all likelihood your email was picked at random, cracked (yahoo is unfortunately very easy to crack), and then used for spam and the spammer moved on to other prey. You probably don't have to worry about the security of your computer.

There is a possibility that a keylogger or some other spyware has been installed on your computer, in which case the security of your machine has been compromised, but this is highly unlikely. If someone had that kind of access to your computer they probably wouldn't bother with using your email for spam.

When you're signed into your email, at the top left of the page where it says hi "your name", you can click on that and go to "account info". From that page you can check "recent login activity" to see if someone else has been logging into your email account from somewhere other than your state. You can also change your password and security settings there.

I wouldn't bother contacting yahoo support, they have a form for these complaints you can fill out, but they are so common that you'll probably not get much more than a standardized response with basic instructions on how to increase the security of your account, like adding extra verification.

Yeah, that happens all the time. My cousin once had no idea that all of his Hotmail contacts were recieving penis enargement spam messages from his address.

Also make sure you run a scan for any malware on your machine. There are a few of these that can provide the information being used to access your account as well as pull your contact lists. I use Avast. It's freeware, but I've yet to ever pick anything up on my system with it.

I think simply changing your password will do. I'm on hotmail and this recently happened to one of my accounts. Hotmail contacted me and got me to change the password, now the account is fine and my friends and family are no longer getting adverts for sex toys and the like....

Thank you all, especially O-P. That was all very helpful.

Any luck resolving this? And where you really hacked or was it something else?

Originally Posted by Buh4Bee

Any luck resolving this? And where you really hacked or was it something else?

I changed my password. I checked my added programs and found nothing that wasn't supposed to be there, and I ran a clean up security check. No one on my contacts has seemed to have gotten anything else from my address. I'm going to still keep the account since I've got it as a link to a number of things. If something continues to go wrong I'll re-assess.

As to whether I was hacked, I think Orphan above has it right. I think they got into my yahoo account, but not my computer. Of course I can't be entirely sure.

Haven't gotten any more.. I meant to tell you when the first came, but none further. :)

Thanks Nik. Some people did get a second. Let me know if you do.