One of my friends has had his BT Internet address book hacked and spam messages are being sent to people in it (for some reason I've not received any). He's asked me to help him to overcome the problem. His PC is running Windows 7 and he's using webmail rather than an email client. My suggestion is as follows:
1. Install Thunderbird on PC and set it to read BT Internet email.
2. Use webmail to download BT Internet address book to Thunderbird.
3. Use webmail to change email address and password.
4. Check that Thunderbird is still accessing email.
5. Use webmail to delete address book on the BT server.
6. Use Thunderbird to notify those in address book of new email address.
I'd appreciate comments from anyone clued up on these things.
|
I am not a technical expert, but:-
Is this a number of messages over a period of time?
This seems to happen to quite a few people, but only once.
Discourage him, and others from cc'ing everybody. Use bcc.
You may well find that the hackers have now moved on to someone else.
|
>> Is this a number of messages over a period of time?
>>
I can't answer that question, Duncan. I doubt whether he can either - he's not had the time to investigate very much.
My thinking is that BT Internet and webmail are behind the problems, but he doesn't want to ditch BT.
|
Your proposed plan seems a sound belt and braces approach to move to a new account
However do bear in mind that whatever it was which prompted the spam (probably your friend opening something malicious) might have left residue on the machine which may simply "attach itself" to the new account (i.e. it could have saved triggers in the mailbox or elsewhere on the machine). It'd be good to try to find out what time/date it started and see if there is corresponding email.
So personally in the first place I'd just change my password and send out an apology to my contacts for the spam, and see if it happened again.
|
Hacked email - Duncan
