I think I have virus in my computer, .

[yungman]

This is the second time my computer sent a lot of email out to my friends, what do I have to do to fix it?

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

First run an antivirus and malware scan.

 

[Mark44]

This is the second time my computer sent a lot of email out to my friends, what do I have to do to fix it?

It might not be a virus - it might be that someone has hijacked your email account, and is sending out emails on your behalf. If that's the case, you need to reset the password on your email account. You should also contact customer support for your email account.

 

[wuliheron]

What operating system do you have?

 

[r4z0r84]

Change your password, i have had the exact same thing happen to myself, phishing scams and so forth get sent out to my whole contact list, protect yourself by not opening any emails that you do not know the sender.

If its something on your computer, i personally use MalwareBytes and AVG as they are free, if you want to buy anti virus, Norton 360 slows down your computer the most, Norton Internet Security is slightly better, if i was to purchase an anti virus i would go with Trend micro though. as i am not an average user i do not use any anti virus as i use firefox and abp to block all untrusted websites/images/flash plus i have my email account set to exclusive meaning all mail goes straight to my junk mail box, so i only ever get mail from people i trust and know.

 

[wuliheron]

Change your password, i have had the exact same thing happen to myself, phishing scams and so forth get sent out to my whole contact list, protect yourself by not opening any emails that you do not know the sender.

If its something on your computer, i personally use MalwareBytes and AVG as they are free, if you want to buy anti virus, Norton 360 slows down your computer the most, Norton Internet Security is slightly better, if i was to purchase an anti virus i would go with Trend micro though. as i am not an average user i do not use any anti virus as i use firefox and abp to block all untrusted websites/images/flash plus i have my email account set to exclusive meaning all mail goes straight to my junk mail box, so i only ever get mail from people i trust and know.

Windows 7 can use Microsoft Security Essentials for free and it is quite good and fast. Along with something like MalwareBytes which is also free it should be all you need. If you do need better protection it's best to spend more money and buy something better than Norton or McAfee which are just generic commercial products not really any better than what comes free with windows 7.

 

[jedishrfu]

also turn on the show links feature so that your emails show the urls of links in your email then make sure they look legit before clicking on them. turn off html features for your email so something doesn't get loaded when the email is shown.

Lastly, make sure your passwords are all different between your accounts and not easily guessable using your personal info or common words... best is to have a nonsense pw with letters, numbers and punctuation.

 

[yungman]

Thanks for the advice. I have been spending hours trying to reset my password and I ran into walls and circles.

I have @sbcblobal.net email address. I have att DSL acount. I just absolutely have no luck in changing the password. The instructions are all wrong, they want me to log into myATT account, No matter what user name I typed in, it's wrong. I tried my email address, I tried everything, I use my billing name or any name I can even guess and no luck! I don't know what to do!

It is nothing like log into the email and go to the top of the page and click support and change. I got all the instruction including eHow! It just don't work this way.

 

[Routaran]

If you need to log into your AT&T account and can't, then you'll need to contact AT&T and have them reset your password for you. This usually involves some kind of security check to verify you are who you say you are, provide the account number, your address, etc.
They should then be able to reset your account and provide you a temporary password which you are then expected to change to something you want to use.
My fav malware scanner utility is Spybot Search and Destroy. Its free.
http://www.safer-networking.org/

For general protection, i use windows security essentials as well.

One last bit of very important advice.
Do not run your system under an account with administrator privileges for normal use. Create a user level account for doing all your normal work and setup a separate password protected admin account that you use to install/uninstall software. This will save you enormous amounts of grief in the long run. Under normal use, the worst that the vast majority of malware can do is change a few meaningless settings on your user level account which one simple scan from the admin account (which is not infected) will easily remove. There are a few that pieces of malware that were written by ppl that actually know what they are doing but the vast majority aren't and you can protect yourself against them by making this minor change in how you use your system.

 

[yungman]

Thanks, I'll try that.

I have no problem logging into the email, I just cannot change the password. Everything is working except twice strange mails were sent out from my account. The problem is described in my last post that I cannot/ don't know how to change the password. I ran into walls in every single direction, I spent hours on that already.

 

[Routaran]

I was referring to the part where you said you couldn't log into your myATT account. That's something I would imagine AT&T should be able to help you with. Apologies for not being more clear. That's why I suggested you contact them to see if they can help you reset that account information.

 

[yungman]

Thanks. Just finished mowing lawn and all, I'll try this later today.

Thanks

Alan

 

[yungman]

I finally managed to change the password. My question now is how can I check the computer to be sure that the virus is not in the computer?

 

[wuliheron]

I finally managed to change the password. My question now is how can I check the computer to be sure that the virus is not in the computer?

We already told you how to do that.

 

[r4z0r84]

In regards to checking that your email account is no longer sending out bogus emails.

A bit of an explination as to what is actually happening.

An external force had gained your email account username and password, using this information to send out information on your behalf (note facebook applications/games/ect do the same thing)

After changing your password they can no longer send out emails on your behalf.

To ensure this is correct and they have not already sent out emails simply do as follows

Create a new message, send it to yourself or a friend containing "test" or keep it blank(upto you)

All phishing scams use your last 50 or so contacts.

Give it a week or so and if you don't receive a new spam email from yourself or your friend doesn't receive one you have successfully stopped this phishing scam.

More than likely just changing your password is enough unless there is something on your computer, i would suggest to use a different web browser if you are using "Internet Explorer" this will avoid anything that is currently installed into your browser that may be sharing your private information (passwords ect)

 

[r4z0r84]

also on the password type spectrum you could have a password that is 20 characters long and simple to remember or have a 7 character extremely hard password to remember, if the enemy is using a password cracker it would take about 3 days to crack the 7 digit password vs 350 years to crack the 20 digit password. i am over/under estimating this just to make a point, the longer your password the harder it is to crack, its not really all about using random strings of information it is harder to guess as a human yes but its easier to guess as a computer.