grahambute
Wednesday 10th Jun 2009, 09:29 AM
I have kept alive an old hotmail address that I set up in 2002 when I was moving home and needed a permanent contact email address.
I have not used this account to send emails since 2004 although I usually check it once a month to keep it alive and pick up the odd email from a contact who has had a PC crunch and in rebuilding contact list has picked up an old email address.
Yesterday I solved a problem that I have been having on Mozilla Thunderbird and decided to send myself an email from hotmail to check it out, when I opened my hotmail account I found about 20 messages saying that it had not been possible to deliver an email. Just as I was reading it I got a mobile call from my brother asking if I had just sent him an email with a couple of attchments. I had not sent any emails from this account so checked my sent folder and found that yesterday every contact in my hotmail contacts had been sent an email promoting a US electronics retailing website (my hotmail address is a .com one).
There is no way that anybody could have found out my password, I use the alarm code of a previous employer back in 1999 (since changed - it was the owners date of birth) and I have never needed to write it down. My kids ( youngest is 36) do not live at home and do not use my PC if they visit due to its antiquity. My wife has never in her life even turned on a PC and changed doctors when the existing one put in a system where patients have to use a touch screen system to enter their d.o.b. to announce their arrival.
It therefore must be the case either that somebody has found a way of spying on my PC (unlikely and they would get better results hacking into my existing emails contacts list rather than the hotmail one that is 7 years out of date) OR somebody has found a way of hacking into hotmail. I know that people find a way of sending junk email as if it has come from somebody elses emails address BUT these emails all appeared in my sent folder on hotmail.
I have now changed my password and deleted all contacts from my hotmail account to prevent similar occurrences. I assume that will prevent a repetition but if not I will just delete the account, although I am loathe to do so as friends who we do not see often actually sent us an invite to a party using this address recently - we did not see it until the day before the party although they had sent it 3 weeks earlier.
Has anybody else had a similar problem? Does anybody know how to make direct contact with Hotmail to get them to take some action (I have filled in an online form but all phone numbers for MSN have options which do not allow for hotmail enquiries).
I have not used this account to send emails since 2004 although I usually check it once a month to keep it alive and pick up the odd email from a contact who has had a PC crunch and in rebuilding contact list has picked up an old email address.
Yesterday I solved a problem that I have been having on Mozilla Thunderbird and decided to send myself an email from hotmail to check it out, when I opened my hotmail account I found about 20 messages saying that it had not been possible to deliver an email. Just as I was reading it I got a mobile call from my brother asking if I had just sent him an email with a couple of attchments. I had not sent any emails from this account so checked my sent folder and found that yesterday every contact in my hotmail contacts had been sent an email promoting a US electronics retailing website (my hotmail address is a .com one).
There is no way that anybody could have found out my password, I use the alarm code of a previous employer back in 1999 (since changed - it was the owners date of birth) and I have never needed to write it down. My kids ( youngest is 36) do not live at home and do not use my PC if they visit due to its antiquity. My wife has never in her life even turned on a PC and changed doctors when the existing one put in a system where patients have to use a touch screen system to enter their d.o.b. to announce their arrival.
It therefore must be the case either that somebody has found a way of spying on my PC (unlikely and they would get better results hacking into my existing emails contacts list rather than the hotmail one that is 7 years out of date) OR somebody has found a way of hacking into hotmail. I know that people find a way of sending junk email as if it has come from somebody elses emails address BUT these emails all appeared in my sent folder on hotmail.
I have now changed my password and deleted all contacts from my hotmail account to prevent similar occurrences. I assume that will prevent a repetition but if not I will just delete the account, although I am loathe to do so as friends who we do not see often actually sent us an invite to a party using this address recently - we did not see it until the day before the party although they had sent it 3 weeks earlier.
Has anybody else had a similar problem? Does anybody know how to make direct contact with Hotmail to get them to take some action (I have filled in an online form but all phone numbers for MSN have options which do not allow for hotmail enquiries).