[starbug]

I was wondering if anyone could help me with a problem i am having with hotmail, there support is useless. The problem i seem to be sending spam to all my contacts despite the fact that i am not. Today for example i got home from uni, switched on my computer and logged in to my hotmail account only to discover i had 25 emails from my contacts telling me to stop sending spam. So i checked my sent items and i have 60 sent messages which i did not send! Has my mail account been hacked and how do i stop it?

PS i also triple checked my machine for virus's and mine is clean.

[General Battuta]

In spite of the clean results, odds are you have a virus. You should back up key files and reformat your hard drive.

In the meantime switch to Gmail. Hotmail is dead and bad.

[Thaeris]

I disagree with that. I quite like Hotmail, and use it thouroughly as my primary mail platform. Though I can't fix your problem, if you're on campus, ask the IT guys to run some sweeps of your computer with any anti-virus stuff that you may not have. Next, Hotmail is pretty useful for classwork, as you can just upload data to the net through Windows Live. I use Hotmail for all my image hosting needs, and given that Microsoft was kind enough to give me up to 25 GB of free storage space, I'm not about to complain. That said, once you fix the issue, I'd say to keep with Hotmail.

[iamzack]

hotmail and yahoo are for old people

[General Battuta]

You'll need a Google account one way or another to use stuff like Google Docs. There will always be people who have difficulty with the idea that you can use more than one platform, but setting them aside, in your case it'd probably help you out to at least check it out.

[Grizzly]

hotmail and yahoo are for old people

17 years means being old?

Does this mean that my goverment will invest in me?

[starbug]

hotmail and yahoo are for old people

Crap i must be old at 27 LOL

Anyway the reason i thought it was hotmail was because all the junk was sent while my home computer was switched off at the mains. I don't use hotmail at the campus, it has its own e-mail system that we have to use. I have looked at the hotmail forums, and this seems to be a bit of well known problem and all the hotmail support can offer is just to change my password which i have done twice.

[Angelus]

hotmail and yahoo are for old people

17 years means being old?

Does this mean that my goverment will invest in me?

no. they hope you die before you start costing them money.
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try another anti virus sweep in safe mode.

[General Battuta]

Get a new account?

[NGTM-1R]

Wait, I thought hotmail got moved to live these days, the original is still active?

[starbug]

Yeah i think getting a new account, maybe elsewhere is what i am going to do. I had done a virus scan in safe mode before i started this topic and according to Norton i am clean.

[Iss Mneur]

Wait, I thought hotmail got moved to live these days, the original is still active?

IIRC, they are one and the same, but the name is still around.

Anyway the reason i thought it was hotmail was because all the junk was sent while my home computer was switched off at the mains. I don't use hotmail at the campus, it has its own e-mail system that we have to use. I have looked at the hotmail forums, and this seems to be a bit of well known problem and all the hotmail support can offer is just to change my password which i have done twice.

In that case, you probably do have some sort of malware on you computer that is logging keystrokes. 

Which is something we are not really the most qualified bunch to help with, so go and register on http://bleepingcomputer.com and seek help there.  They are very good a figuring this kind of stuff out.

[BloodEagle]

hotmail and yahoo are for old people

Crap i must be old at 27 LOL

Anyway the reason i thought it was hotmail was because all the junk was sent while my home computer was switched off at the mains. I don't use hotmail at the campus, it has its own e-mail system that we have to use. I have looked at the hotmail forums, and this seems to be a bit of well known problem and all the hotmail support can offer is just to change my password which i have done twice.

You probably have a keylogger that keeps sending your new password to a bot.

Wait, I thought hotmail got moved to live these days, the original is still active?

Hotmail accounts are still active, they just use the Live system.  In fact, some (lazy) universities use Live as their main e-mail system.

::PREEMPTIVE EDIT:: Ninja'd.

[Rodo]

I had this problem with my 10 years old account, I changed my password and everything is working fine so far.

[Nuke]

hotmail sucks, their logon is buggy, hell i have to enter my logon info twice before i can check my email. it was less buggy back when i opened it like a decade ago. the only reason i keep it (or any other addy for that matter) is im not sure how many things (like forum accounts, paypal, im, etc) are dependent on that email. and i certainly dont want to spend hours changing all that crap. frankly email in general seems so old skool that im surprised that an email address is required by so many things on the internet. **** it! the internet sucks, i hate the internet.

NUKE THE INTERNET!!!

[Enigmatic Entity]

Neo's SafeKeys can be useful if you are worried about keyloggers, it's free and portable. Only thing is that it may get tedious if you use the hover option...

I use gmail because waiting for Windoze Live is annoying, and after you log out, you have to wait for NineMSN to load just to make sure it logged out properly.

[iamzack]

hotmail sucks, their logon is buggy, hell i have to enter my logon info twice before i can check my email. it was less buggy back when i opened it like a decade ago. the only reason i keep it (or any other addy for that matter) is im not sure how many things (like forum accounts, paypal, im, etc) are dependent on that email. and i certainly dont want to spend hours changing all that crap. frankly email in general seems so old skool that im surprised that an email address is required by so many things on the internet. **** it! the internet sucks, i hate the internet.

NUKE THE INTERNET!!!

why dont you just get a gmail account and have the hotmail account forward everything to it? i have like a dozen different email addresses and i only use one inbox.

[Nuke]

i have 2 gmail accounts (i also have a yahoo account). i dont actually use email. the only reason i have email at all is so that i can sign up to forums and stuff like that. id close them all if i could, my problem is that everything on the internet is email dependent.

[achtung]

i have 2 gmail accounts (i also have a yahoo account). i dont actually use email. the only reason i have email at all is so that i can sign up to forums and stuff like that. id close them all if i could, my problem is that everything on the internet is email dependent.

What alternative do you suggest?

[S-99]

Change your password. That should stop whoever it was from sending spam using your account.

EDIT: And clean out your machine just to be safe in case there was something bad like a keylogger. And if you use an email client. Stop using it. There's not much reason to need to create a new account. Your email is sending spam, you got infiltrated on your end by a third party.

Change your password to something better than hello123. Make your password recovery secret question not easy to guess. Stop running as administrator 24/7. Don't use email clients like outlook or thunderbird, etc. And don't just login to your email on any computer. **** if i login into anything on my old room mates computer, the damn so called computer technician lets his computer run as administrator 24/7 and has the firewall off; **** if i'd be retarded enough to check my email on it.

I only login to my web based stuff on devices and computers other than my own if they meet my lofty requirements. Out of need, occasionally i wont.