How do I deal with a bot sending junk emails from my yahoo account?
By divineathena
@divineathena (1746)
United States
April 11, 2012 1:55am CST
Today, for the first time, I noticed that one of my email addresses on Yahoo was used by a bot to send spams to people from my contact list. Does it mean my email address has got hacked? And if I change the password will the bot stop sending my friends spams?
The message structure was something like:
The key to online success lies in this powerful remarkable system
www. xyc.com
This is not the main link used, but a random sample. I did a Google search to know which site was responsible for it. No search result was returned to me.
4 responses
@momof3kids (1894)
• Singapore
12 Apr 12
Its definite you got hacked. It happened to me last year. It was so strange to see someone used your account (I saw he or she sent emails from my sent box).
Like the above posters, you need to change your password.
I think a lot of these have been happening. i got two or three friends sending me such emails. Now when i see just a single link or hardly anything in the email, I do not open it.
@divineathena (1746)
• United States
12 Apr 12
Isn't this whole hacker's situation annoying? I got the password changed. The funny thing is that my sent box does not have a trace of those spam emails. I came to know about them only because I had one of my other Yahoo email address added to my contact list. I usually don't use the emaill address that got hacked. Do you let your friends know that you got such emails from them?
@momof3kids (1894)
• Singapore
13 Apr 12
I think the hacker might have deleted the emails that he sent. that is why you dont see them in your sentbox. My 'hacker' wasnt so careful.
In my case that is also how I got to know I have been hacked. i happen to have one of my email addresses in the account that got hacked. I remember how strange it was that I got an email from myself that i dont remember sending.
Anyway according to yahoo (when I read later after changing my password), you might have been sent a bogus page which looked like a yahoo page. Yahoo says that you should put up an identity seal which will confirm that the page you open is from yahoo.
Yes it is VERY annoying and yes I did tell my friends what happen.
To think that they came up with such trouble (to 'copy' an exact yahoo page) to con people. There are so many ways of earning online honestly and they choose this one. It is such pity.
@owlwings (43907)
• Cambridge, England
11 Apr 12
It sounds as if your account was hacked. Changing your password is the first thing you should do. It should be at least 8 characters, a mixture of lower-case, upper-case, numerals and symbols and not a word or words which could easily be guessed. For example, if you were to choose the phrase: 'mylotisgreat', you might write this as 'mYl0t1$9r3@T' (make sure that you remember which letters you have replaced with Caps, numerals and symbols!).
If the hacker has chosen to copy your contacts list, there is probably nothing that can be done now to prevent them being sent spam but it will not be from your address (though it may seem to be).
@divineathena (1746)
• United States
12 Apr 12
At last, got my password changed. Thank you for the reply. Good thing is that this specific yahoo mail was not directly connected to my friends I have in my personal life. I used it mainly just for my blog. If the hacker is really a bot probably it got in through any of the web directory email sent to me after I submitted my blog to it. The people in my contact list were a few bloggers. I would be embarrassed if they emailed me asking about that hacker's email.
@owlwings (43907)
• Cambridge, England
12 Apr 12
Many such 'web directory' sites are simply set up to harvest email addresses. You would be stupid to use the same password when joining them as you use for the email address you give them! (I hope you didn't ... but I suspect you did! 
)
)
@polaroidsredwine (509)
• United States
12 Apr 12
As others have said, definitely change your password - and disregard some of the folks who say to do the number-letter-symbol mix thing if it causes too much issues remembering it. Your best bet is to use a short phrase that you'll remember easily for your password (the more nonsensical, the better). Of course, if the mashup thing works for you, feel free to use it.
@divineathena (1746)
• United States
12 Apr 12
Thanks, I did as instructed by you all. I swear the situation seemed frustrating. Thank God I did not have any credit card number or personal information over there. Otherwise, who knows what the bot would have done!
@NailTech (6874)
• United States
12 Apr 12
I think my dad just recently got that and I had to change his password for him. It happened to two friends of mine too this past 4-5 months. I think the emails had no subject in them. My friend was saying it was a bot. How do bots get into emails???
@divineathena (1746)
• United States
12 Apr 12
Was it a Yahoo email account he was using? I think my dad's aol mail was also hacked for which I received marketing emails from him. I read a few months ago that bots collect email addresses from websites. They usually prefer the ones that are openly shared online. This makes me think of one specific site and that is Facebook
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