Reclaim a hacked email account?

[bailadora]

My mother's email account (yahoo) was recently hacked and someone is using it to send spam to everyone on her list. Is it possible to reclaim the account or should she give it up as lost? I tried to google solutions, but as I know next to nothing about computers, it was like trying to read a foreign language. If you have any remedies or solutions we should try, please pretend you're speaking to a 3 year old and write in the simplest language possible. Thanks!

 

[simpletimes]

My mother's email account (yahoo) was recently hacked and someone is using it to send spam to everyone on her list. Is it possible to reclaim the account or should she give it up as lost? I tried to google solutions, but as I know next to nothing about computers, it was like trying to read a foreign language. If you have any remedies or solutions we should try, please pretend you're speaking to a 3 year old and write in the simplest language possible. Thanks!

Best thing to do is contact yahoo, close the account and open a new one, tell her to be sure to change her password often to help stave of the hackers. But nothing is safe really anymore, especially with free emails. Check into a better security program

 

[SweetErika]

I can't really help, but she might try Gmail if she opens a new account. Both Hubby and I have been alerted when someone attempted to hack our accounts (Gmail said my attempt went through Iraq, incidentally ) so we could change our passwords. Plus, I've heard of more people having their yahoo accounts hacked and hijacked. I belong to a group and it seems like someone with a yahoo account is hacked every other day!

 

[amofiga]

My mother's email account (yahoo) was recently hacked and someone is using it to send spam to everyone on her list. Is it possible to reclaim the account or should she give it up as lost? I tried to google solutions, but as I know next to nothing about computers, it was like trying to read a foreign language. If you have any remedies or solutions we should try, please pretend you're speaking to a 3 year old and write in the simplest language possible. Thanks!

This has happened to us twice in the past 5 months. The first time my wife completely changed her account (new name, new passwords) and imported her contacts to the new account. If you have yahoo, it will "ask you" when you set up a new account if you want to import contacts. There is also a 'help" button in the opper right of the screen that will let you ask about how to do stuff.

The second time it happened, one of the guys in my golf group who was the former head of IT at my former employer told me to just change the password and that would do it. That seemed to solve it. Make sure you use a strong password with lower and upper case letters, numbers, and maybe a non-alphabetic character.

It probably won't do much good to contact yahoo since it's probably not their fault per se. It probably came from some message you got from a friend with a link to click on like YouTube or something else. Links to pages that look like advertisements or even "porno clips" from friends can carry this trojan virus. If you have a good virus scan like Microsoft Defender or Microsoft Security Essentials, they can sometimes stop them. Words of advice, tell your friends:

1) Don't send you links to silly jokes, videos of cute kittens, political commentary, etc or any hyperlink. Don't click on any links until you at least write your friend back and ask if they indeed sent it. What looks like a YouTube link could be a bogus link to some place with malware.

2) Don't trust messages from friends or contacts that have no subject line or generic subject lines like 'Hi" How ya doing" etc. Tell them you want specific subject lines like "information about aunt edna's birthday party" or "tee time set for this thursday". The phony messages usually come with generic subjects or "no subject". My wife got caught opening one from her niece that just said "hi".

3) Warn your friends to not open generic messages and links that seem to come from you without contacting you back first. Suggest that they also change their password.

We tracked our issue initially to a message my wife opened from her niece who then traced it to a message to her sister in law. Each contained a link with a message, "you'll really like this". The link went to an "advertisement" for a program to make money working from home. It really contained a trojan that hyjacked e-mail addresses from the account contact list that also contained the trojan. Turns out my wife's brother and another friend also got it when we started getting the same bogus messages back from them. There are a lot of assholes in this world with nothing better to do. My concern is that it's just as easy to plant a keylogger trojan like this and then your bank accounts and other stuff could be compromised if you use online banking.

Good luck. Be very careful with what you send and do via e-mail. I had my credit card number hijacked a few years back when I ordered a Sturgis Rally tee shirt for what looked like a great price. Somebody got the credit card info and ordered about $200 worth of stuff before we got the next bill and noticed the bogus charges. Fortunately with weren't held liable for payment but did have to get a new credit card number. THey were smart enough not to make big charges that might have triggered the credit card security account.

 

[dashd]

It may or may not have been hacked. Spammers can falsify e-mail headers so that it looks like it's coming form that yahoo account and may or may not be. Yet another side is that perhaps her computer has a virus (technically a worm) that either read her login from her computer or just the address list. Personally I hate Yahoo. I get spam in that account like it's going out of style. I would switch to gmail or one of mail.com or mail2world.com free e-mails. absolutely no spam received. One additional point on yahoo, as it is coupled with their messenger program, the worm or hacker could be using that to their advantage.

 

[RobertBarre]

It may or may not have been hacked. Spammers can falsify e-mail headers so that it looks like it's coming form that yahoo account and may or may not be.

Agreed. It's just as likely that her on-line contact list was compromised (along with thousands of others) and the addresses were used to make the bad-guy's client spam seem more credible (because it appeared to your mom's friends be coming from your mom). This is not the same thing as a personalized attack in which some guy is sitting in Prague reading your mom's e-mail. Most of these attacks are automated, distributed, bulk-rate and impersonal.

Just changing her password might be a sufficient fix. If this is a big deal and she's not attached to her existing e-mail address, maybe the gmail route is worthwhile.

Good luck.

 

[bailadora]

Thanks for the assistance so far!

Good luck. Be very careful with what you send and do via e-mail. I had my credit card number hijacked a few years back when I ordered a Sturgis Rally tee shirt for what looked like a great price. Somebody got the credit card info and ordered about $200 worth of stuff before we got the next bill and noticed the bogus charges. Fortunately with weren't held liable for payment but did have to get a new credit card number. THey were smart enough not to make big charges that might have triggered the credit card security account.

Thankfully, she doesn't do much with this account other than email. AFAIK, she doesn't do anything financial with it, but I hear you on the fraud. Shortly before we purchased our previous home, we were informed that a false bank account had been opened in my husband's name. Fortunately, fraud alert notified us quickly and we were able to nip it in the bud, but it was still scary.

Just changing her password might be a sufficient fix. If this is a big deal and she's not attached to her existing e-mail address, maybe the gmail route is worthwhile. Good luck.

We'll start there and if that doesn't work, then see about the new account. Thanks!

 

[silverwhisper]

bail, definitely do the password change if that's still possible*. also consider suggesting your mom change e-mail providers. gmail & hotmail both offer integration with e-mail clients, which yahoo noticeably does not (for free).

definitely always use a strong password. if there's an expression of the 8-16 word length that she uses often, try abbreviating that expression to produce a stronger password. we all know the expression "the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog": it's the standard test of a new typewriter. abbreviating it produces the password tqbfjotld. no one is gonna guess that.

i'm a proponent of using l337 in passwords since such use involves non-alpha characters. i think a twitter hashtag would also lend itself to a strong password, but that's neither here nor there.

ed

*note that if the account truly was hacked, the first thing someone is going to do is change the password.

 

[bailadora]

Thanks for the additional info, Ed. Good to see you! Stick around for awhile, why doncha?