Computers Hacked

[Bread Man]

Yesterday someone hacked my computer and took all my contact details and deleted them of my systems, they then sent a email to everyone in my two email addresses asking for help and money. Since then I've received endless emails from people on my contact list asking what's happening, unfortunately I cannot contact everyone as I can only remember a few email addresses, the rest which have been collected over the years have gone forever. As a precautionary measure all accounts have been changed with a new password. This is very strange and reading the Daily Mail this morning on line from England I notice that the comedian Johnny Ball had exactly the same thing happen to him yesterday. Please be aware of this.
I at attach a copy of the email which was sent out with my email address as a scam!
Thank you

Hello,

I am sorry for reaching you rather too late due to the situation of things right now.My family and I had a trip visiting Kharkov Ukraine,everything was going on fine until last night when we got attacked by some unknown gunmen. All our money,phones and credit cards was stolen away including some valuable items, It was a terrible experience but the good thing is that they didn't hurt anyone or made away with our passports.

We have reported the incident to the local authorities and the consulate but their response was too casual, we were ask to come back in 2 weeks time for investigations to be made proper,But the truth is we can't wait till then as we have just got our return flight booked and is leaving in few hours from now but presently having problems sorting out our bills here and also getting a cab down to the airport, Right now we're financially strapped due to the unexpected robbery attack, Wondering if you can help us with a quick loan to sort out our bills and get back home. All we need is (2,800 £) I promise to refund you in full as soon as I return home hopefully tomorrow or next. write back now to let me know what you can do.


Thank You.

[BobHelm]

I doubt if your computer was hacked, it was probably just your email account.

If you are using Hotmail (or any of its' variations, like Live, Outlook etc.) or Yahoo then that is probably what has happened.
An email attachment was opened that allowed the hidden, attached program to strip all the address from your email account & send the messages.
If that is what happened then once you change your email password you are no longer in danger - although you will have lost all your email contacts.

However there is also a possibility that the program that did that also attached itself to your computer.
You need to do a total virus scan of all your computer drives now in order to find & delete any infections that may be there.
If you do not have a good & up to date virus checker then I suggest that you do here..
http://www.malwarebytes.org/products/malwarebytes_free/
& download now & then use... The free version is probably enough, after the event.. the pay for, Pro version would have probably stopped this happening..

[Bandung_Dero]

I keep a Yahoo email account as a spare, rarely gets used, it had all my contacts imported into it. A year ago someone hacked into Yahoo and basically the same thing, request for help sent out. I wasn't the only one caught out, there were many. Fortunately I was able to contact most everyone and warn em using my day to day (gmail) account.

I do not keep contacts on any external server anymore, they are only located in my MS Office "OUTLOOK" address book.

[Frankie 1]

Something similar happened with me about 8 years ago. After I broke up with my first Thai girlfriend, everybody on my Hotmail contact list received a couple of virus emails per day for a couple of days, seemingly from my Hotmail email address.

I didn't live in Thailand at that time. I managed to track down the IP address and the email headers (IP address in Bangkok). I sent the info to the Hotmail support team, and sent the info to the internet provider of the IP address.

Don't know the result, and consequences for the owner of that IP address. The virus emails stopped.

According to the Hotmail support team, my Hotmail contact list was hacked through a security breach in Internet Explorer, the Hotmail address book was also automatically stored in Internet Explorer. That was 8 years ago.

[Bread Man]

Thanks to everyone for your responses I have scanned everything as suggested by Bob, a couple of things popped up that should not been there, so good advice. Both Hotmail and BTinternet were involved lets hope that this will not re-occur or I will have to close these accounts. Good idea about keeping contacts out of the accounts, when I managed to find some I will keep them on a hard disc.
Many Thanks

John

[douglas]

Never keep this type of info on your computer. Get a external memory stick and keep it on that.
A one G byte stick only costs about 300B out here. And is far safer, also password protect it. I have never had any trouble since I did this.
Cheers Doug.

[Bread Man]

Never keep this type of info on your computer. Get a external memory stick and keep it on that.
A one G byte stick only costs about 300B out here. And is far safer, also password protect it. I have never had any trouble since I did this.
Cheers Doug.

Thank you Doug, I've done just that, lesson learnt!