how did a spammer get hold of my address book?

seon09: how did a spammer get hold of my address book?
I have had 2 people say they got spammed by an email address similar to mine. I want to know: How did they get hold of my contacts and is this illegal? Is it something I can go to the police about? What can I do? Any advice would be appreciated.

Answers and Views:

Answer by Mike S
This happens alot…usually a win 32 backdoor Trojan or bot is placed on the computer by going to unsecured sites or visiting a website that has a Malicious URL code built in for anyone clicking on the website….your e-mail has not been hacked…nor do you need to change your password (but that is up to you)…..but the infection(s) must be removed…download and scan with these two free utilities….and when you download malwarebytes…it will ask you for a free trial to the paid pro version…just click “no thanks”…the free version works just as well….

https://download.cnet.com/Malwarebytes-Anti-Malware/3000-8022_4-10804572.html

https://download.cnet.com/SuperAntiSpyware-Free-Edition/3000-8022_4-10523889.html

Answer by H_Dickory_Dock
Of course it’s illegal, someone in Ukraine or Russia or Romania likely has it…along with hundreds of thousands of other address books. I doubt your local Police will want to fly 7000 miles to investigate, they have important crimes to solve.

Actually, There are two possibilities here.

1. The spam industry has somehow “acquired” your password and is using it to send junk mail by accessing your provider’s e-mail servers using your password.

The solution…..change your e-mail password to a strong one of at least 10 characters…use both upper and lower case letters and throw in some numerals and punctuation marks too. Do NOT use this password for anything else, like Facebook…especially Facebook!!

2. Your computer has become infected by an e-mail worm and has turned your own computer into an illicit e-mail server.

The solution…perform a full system scan with both your anti-virus and anti-spyware softwares. Quarantine whatever they find.

>>>>> Try #1 first <<<<<

Answer by adaviel
It is almost certainly nothing to worry about – spammers often use one of their victim’s addresses as the “from” address, to make it look like a real person sent the mail.
Sometimes they use your address as the return address, too, in which case you get nondelivery messages for people you never heard of.

If your friends are good with computers, ask them to check the full email headers and compare them to those on a real message you sent. If they are actually the same, then yes, perhaps your email has been hacked. This is quite common on webmail systems at colleges etc, when users’ passwords are guessed or they fall for some phish message “your account is over quota. send your password to [email protected] to re-enable it”.

If your computer is infected with malware and is part of a botnet, it will be sending mail out with someone else’s address on, not yours. It might try sending directly, or it might go through your ISP, but it won’t use your name or return address and you will only find out if your ISP calls or you check your network traffic with e.g. Wireshark on port 25.

Answer by Dunbar Pappy ϟϟ
“ada…” gives one good answer, the others are also possible to a lesser extent, but always make sure to keep your Windows machine squeaky clean…a daunting task for sure.

Also, contacts lists, as here in your Yahoo account for instance, can be appropriated by some of the affiliated services.
When your Yahoo contacts are receiving mail that is related to you somehow, it may be a result of your enabling a Yahoo ‘application’ from a 3rd party.
When you do this there are liberal exchanges of your info with these developers, and you should review what all is involved…it may breach you personal privacy standards, and force you to rescind some permissions and/or terminate the relationship with said application.
See: https://help.yahoo.com/l/us/yahoo/developer/moreinfo/moreinfoapis.html
Read all the page, as Yahoo seems to be washing it’s hands of responsibility, and placing the burden onto you regarding these matters.

You might want to review your current Yahoo “Manage App and Website Connections” to view exactly what’s being shared and with whom; about half way down the above referenced page is the link.

This ‘sharing’ of your data bases (mail for instance) is becoming a widespread tactic among ‘legit’ services, which is why the Terms of Service & Privacy Policies for whatever you associate with must be read and understood…to insure your personal privacy standards are met, or rejected by you alone.