Hotmail Hijacked by Spyware!

After I told a friend of mine about the email-hacking event that happened just a little more than 24 hours ago, he recommended that I get a program to detect and eliminate spyware. I used Spyware Terminator, which is available as a free download, and it appears to have worked.

In addition to that, I changed my pasword and secret question from 2 different computers, twice. It was recommended I change them by MSN Live Support. They did not mention using another computer, but I was afraid if someone got my password from my home computer, then they would know if I changed it from the same computer.

I think this event has made me a lot more paranoid. I have always enjoyed email and Internet browsing, and recently, I discovered Twitter. Well, before I shut down my computer 2 nights ago, I tweeted and checked out some of my follower's pages and websites. Then I decided I needed to send an email to the members of the TBNGH, so I sent a group email notifying them of upcoming meetings. Then I shut off the computer and went to bed. In the morning I was horrified to find a bunch of messages in my inbox saying that delivery had failed to some of my recipients. It seems the unscrupulous fiend had sent at least 20 messages with about 250 illegally obtained addresses step by step from my email address book starting with A and getting to about J or K before reaching my maximum!

Needless to say I was shocked and horrified. And even more horrified when I started getting unpleasant messages from people on my list requesting that I lose their address and never send them junk like this again. Even my Uncle sent an inquiry as to what was the meaning of this?

You can see the message in the previous blog entry.

I am wondering how to apologize to the people on my list. I really feel bad. I am so outraged, I want to spam that guy who did this to me! I wish I knew the best way to do that, but I afraid that any electronic communication could be dangerous and I don't want to have my reputation compromised again. So I have taken every step possible that I know of to prevent a future recurrence of this. I have received a similar message from another online shopping marketing genius who hacked a friend's email address and sent almost incomprehensible messages. I replied to her, sending the original message and she said other people had gotten the same thing and it said it was from her. I have gotten that same message 3 times from her email address. Now I know how it happened.

Or maybe not. I have to link this with Twitter, so I will not be tweeting on a daily basis. I will probably post a tweet about this blog entry, but only after I have closed the browser that I opened hotmail with.

It's a shame. The Internet can be so much fun, especially the social networks. It's too bad there are sharks out there. All I can say is be careful!

And I apologize if you received this illegal and illiterate message saying it was from me.