Computer compromised

[basketballman]

My office computer got a virus on Wednesday and today my civilian girlfriend was contacted by someone who had access to my hobby e-mail account.

I have changed the password on all of my accounts and am wondering how to find out who it is.

I have their e-mail address.

I joined Spokeo and was unable to gain anything from that.

Can someone please advise me on how best to proceed to stop this intrusion?

Thank you

[jframe2]

First off it is highly unlikely you are going to find out who the person is with a degree of certainty.

Having said that, try this- in your email program look for a setting that will let you look at the "email Header". This contains good information on where the email was sent from. Do a quick search and you will find lots of articles on how to do this.

From this header information you might recognize some an originating email or server that might let you deduce the culprit. But do not count on it.

From a different angle, also do some searching to see if there is any news about the server that you are using for your hobby email having been compromised. You would be surprised how often this happens with the best; yahoo. msn, gmail. It happens to them all.

Next is the fact that you said your "work computer" hopefully you are self employed. But be aware that you should approach this situation with a certainty that your entire computer has been compromised. I suggest you do a complete virus scans with the best software you can afford. And if possible you wipe your computer completely and re-install all programs etc. A pain to be sure, but is the only certain way that the virus will be removed.

Been there and I bought a cheap laptop so my work computers (I am self-employed) are never exposed to anything. And I probably wipe the laptop about every 4 months and re-install programs.
Good luck,

[Black Sedan]

Originally Posted by basketballman

My office computer got a virus on Wednesday and today my civilian girlfriend was contacted by someone who had access to my hobby e-mail account.

I have changed the password on all of my accounts and am wondering how to find out who it is.

I have their e-mail address.

I joined Spokeo and was unable to gain anything from that.

Can someone please advise me on how best to proceed to stop this intrusion?

Thank you

You might be jumping the gun.

Any chance it's not a personal attack? The address book harvesting computer viruses spread by sending email to your individuals in your address book FROM your email addresses it gathers. Reasoning: the marks are more likely to trust opening email attachments from somebody they know, get past their spam filters, etc.

This isn't going to make sense, but computers can currently send email with whatever "From:" address they need to, without being able to login to your email account or as you put it "access to your hobby e-mail account"

[MartenWarner]

I am not sure I understand what happened. Was this a stranger that contacted your girlfriend? Did he/she say something you didn't want known?

If this was just an email sent from your hobby account, then Sedan is correct. Many malware or virus' harvest from email accounts in fact that's how they continue to spread, they send emails from your account to people because they know the recipient will recognize your name and open the email. If your g/f open this email and any attachment, she could be infected as well. In addition to your anti-virus program you should have:

1) Spybot - I like it's "immunization" feature that blocks infections

2) Malwarebytes - very thorough scanning.

You should plan one day a week where you run your anti-virus program for a "full scan" as well as Spybot and Malwarebytes at the same time. I usually do this last thing and let it run all night since I have two large hard drives.

Also, you can blame the virus for anything that was sent to your girlfriend claiming you're an innocent victim of the virus. Unless it sent some pics hahaha.

[TexanAtPlay]

I'm confused too.

Big difference between a script virus or a worm which sends random emails or SPAMS, and someone who has physical access to information in the account and in a calculated manner sends it to loved ones.

In theory it could be on the hobby account side, but if it's a worm, it could be one of the computers you access the mail with is infected. It could even be a computer with both contacts in common, or it could have been a mail received, which triggered your email to send out "bogus" emails. My point it, impossible to say without more detail.

Without knowing the client you're using (web mail by the provider, or like Outlook or Windows Mail), whether specific information was sent out along with text to out you to your girlfriend. The email you possess might be an innocent party who had entries in their address books -- the infection might have occured there. But again, I think examination of the exact sequence of events and what was transmitted will nail down where the problem lies.