Email Compromised

Friday morning at 6:15 AM, my email account: [email protected] was compromised. My contacts were sent an email that said I was out of the country and needed money. The email was sent from [email protected]. My contacts and sent mail are deleted. Password changes have no effect. Inbound and outbound email is redirected to the hacker. The initial email and subsequent emails use personal information gleaned from my inbox to convince relatives and friends that it is me communicating with them. Can anything be done to restore this account to my control? If not, can I move the mail to another pop account and delete this address? Regards, Maureen

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Answer #1: Posted by oriolesmagic on August 10th, 2010 6:41 AM

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oriolesmagic

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When you login to the account, if you check your sent email folder do you see the email sent out by the hacker? If you do, then he is actually using your account. I'm guessing this is the case since mail was deleted from your account. You CAN take control of this by changing to a strong password. This means, at least 8 characters, a combination of numbers, uppercase and lowercase letters, and a special character. Use a combination of ALL 4 to create a strong password. An example of a strong password is 345YUab*3%. Most compromised accounts are hacked by brute force methods in which a software program tries millions of different password combinations until it finds your correct password. It begins with the most commonly used passwords. In other words 1234 is not a good password. It would take many years for a brute force attack to work on a strong password.

The other way for the hacker to send email which appear to be from you but really aren't is email spoofing. This is much more common. Unfortunately, there isn't a whole lot you can do about it. This could have occurred if you opened a virus on your PC.

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