I got an email from "my yahoo account"

[woodstock]

Hi

Can spammers spoof your email or did I get hacked? It was a generic spam - something along the lines of "if you want to chat, email me here".

Should I worry about being hacked?

Beth

 

[wsuffa]

Hi

Can spammers spoof your email or did I get hacked? It was a generic spam - something along the lines of "if you want to chat, email me here".

Should I worry about being hacked?

Beth

Either are possible.

Spoofing is very easy - and most likely what has been done.

If you're worried about a hack, go into yahoo - by typing the yahoo address in your browser, not clicking a link - and change the password to a strong password (combo of letters, caps, and numbers).

Also run a good spyware check on your computer to make sure there are no keyloggers installed.

 

[Areeda]

Typically the return address on spam is worthless. It is very easy to do.

Most spam software uses a random address from their list as the "from" address. Causing a real pain when you get 100's of bounce notifications.

Joe

 

[SkyHog]

In the headers, you can easily specify any return email address you want, and that's what probably happened.

 

[woodstock]

I hope it's just a spoof.

For what it is worth, I replied to the email and it came to me. Still a spoof most likely?

ps. thanks for the replies...

 

[SkyHog]

I hope it's just a spoof.

For what it is worth, I replied to the email and it came to me. Still a spoof most likely?

Yep. Was there a link in the email? If so, it was an attempt to get you to click the link.

Replying to the email should have gone to you since that was the reply-to address that was set.

 

[Areeda]

May I suggest you go to spamcop.net and paste the whole email, headers and all into the report box and see who they want to send reports to. They are pretty good at determining where the email came from. If it was yahoo, you can worry, if not don't fret.

Joe

 

[Ted]

Even if it was Yahoo I wouldn't worry. Remember spammers use Yahoo, GMail, etc.

I get eMails from "me" on a daily basis on all my eMail accounts. It's most likely just a spam deal in an attempt to get past spam blockers. Since the reply-to address is your eMail, you'll get the reply back to it.

Spam is cheap to send, and apparently someone must read it.

 

[gprellwitz]

Apparently Beth doesn't get enough, if she thinks this is unusual!

 

[Ted]

Then we should learn what Beth is doing right and emulate it. Well, Beth?

 

[woodstock]

I get spam all the time - I've never had one come "from me" before.

A little unsettling, as a friend who had a yahoo account for years actually was hacked and lost his account. Years of emails.. sure, who reads old emails - but still, there may have been things you wanted to save...

 

[wsuffa]

I get spam all the time - I've never had one come "from me" before.

A little unsettling, as a friend who had a yahoo account for years actually was hacked and lost his account. Years of emails.. sure, who reads old emails - but still, there may have been things you wanted to save...

Worse, sometimes accounts are hacked for nefarious purposes.

There is a long history of that - one of the more public circumstances was the Palin incident. I know of at least one that had international implications. All from hacked Yahoo accounts.