I received an email from a friend... or did I?

[krose]

A friend of mine has an AOL email account. Today I received an email from the account but it was not sent by her. Apparently the email was sent to all her contacts. She is a bit upset. Was her account hacked or could she have some malware on her computer? Computer is running Malwarebytes and Microsoft Security Essentials. She has not run a scan but I will have her do so, plus change her password. In the meantime are there any other ideas? She really doesn't use the computer much and uses good judgment when online. Thanks for any advice.

 

[mechBgon]

Or an infected computer somewhere simply knows her email address, and her friends' email addresses, and is framing her. But a hacked account is certainly possible, was her password an easy one?

 

[krose]

Her password was street and number where she grew up back in the sixties, I don't know how anyone would know that, but she changed it to a complex one as I suggested. Both scans were negative. BTW the email consisted of a link to a so-called article on how some person made a buttload of money on the internet at home, and you could too. Yeah, right.

 

[timswim78]

One possibility is that she used the same password at another site, and that site's security was compromised.

 

[dawks]

Or an infected computer somewhere simply knows her email address, and her friends' email addresses, and is framing her. But a hacked account is certainly possible, was her password an easy one?

Yea, it doesn't particularly mean that her account or computer was even compromised specifically. If I knew your friends email, I could send out emails to anyone and fake it to look like its coming from her.

But they somehow got a hold of her contacts.. either through malware on the computer, getting into her AOL account? (depends on where the contacts are stored, just on the computer? in webmail?).

 

[Matt1970]

Probably not hacked. People just love sending jokes to ALL their contacts. All those contacts now forward it to all of their contacts. And so on..... And so on.... You now have a nice list of email addresses. Pick one of those email addresses and use it as the "sender" and send it to all the other contacts. It makes it look somewhat legit and tends to get more clicks than generic spam will. Basicly what dawks said.

 

[Spacehead]

A friend of mine has an AOL email account. Today I received an email from the account but it was not sent by her. Apparently the email was sent to all her contacts.

Sounds familiar. Here's just a couple.

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=2037891&highlight=email+hacked

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?t=155136&highlight=email+hacked

 

[myinfinity]

Probably not hacked. People just love sending jokes to ALL their contacts. All those contacts now forward it to all of their contacts. And so on..... And so on.... You now have a nice list of email addresses. Pick one of those email addresses and use it as the "sender" and send it to all the other contacts. It makes it look somewhat legit and tends to get more clicks than generic spam will. Basicly what dawks said.

I guess her password is hacked and a bad guy use the account to spread his junk email.

 

[Paperlantern]

This happened to my gmail account. Though gmail detected the activity and shut the account down until I was able to realize what happened, unlock the account with my security information and reset the password to something more complex. I was pretty impressed with gmail when it happened, and glad they couldnt do any more damage than they did.

It does suck though, you feel violated.

 

[krose]

She changed her password, made it more complex, and there have been no problems since. Thanks for the replies.