I have an HP laptop.....................?

Question

I have been told by two of my contacts that I email or I M that they have had to have their computers 'cleaned up' and they were told all problems were traced back to my computer. Can anyone tell me how this is possible ?
I email a lot of people. I have contacted everyone and no one else is having any problems except for 2 people.
What do I need to do to keep this from happening again ?
Thank you

Answer 1

You have most probably got a virus on your computer.



Some viruses send your e-mail address and contact list to a server. This server then stores all these and randomly sends spam messages out which appear to be from your account to your friends.



Unfortunately though once these spam servers have your e-mail address there isn't normally any way to release your e-mail address from them. Because the way e-mail works they don't need to be able to login to your account to send e-mail out in your name, there is just a "From:" section on e-mails that people can just put in what ever they like, some SMTP servers are now checking to make sure that corresponds with the account to try and stop spam, but there are still many out there that don't (and even if they all did there would be nothing to stop spammers just creating their own SMTP server).



Even if you clean your computer because these hackers now have your e-mail address and contact list they can still send messages out as yourself. I have a mate who got his e-mail address stole over 5 years ago, he changed his e-mail address, but I still get spam e-mails today from him under his old e-mail address, because once they've got that address, they've got it there until someone shuts their server down.



Firstly clean your computer up, scan it with ESET Online Scanner http://www.eset.com/us/online-scanner/ to remove any threats, then use Malwarebytes Anti-malware - https://www.malwarebytes.org/‎ to remove anything else that might be left behind.



If you know what your doing also use HijackThis http://sourceforge.net/projects/hjt/ to ensure it's all gone (if you don't know what your doing leave HijackThis - it is a very powerful tool but in it's list not everything it shows is bad, it just shows everything that seems strange to it, which at times it could be something that a main program needs, which is why it should only be used if you know what your doing - if you don't then just use the above two, keep running the above two until all threats are removed - you might need to restart your computer a few times).



After you've removed the virus you can do one of two things - either tell all your friends to ignore any strange spam e-mails from you in the future, or change your e-mail address and tell all your friends your new e-mail address and for them to block or ignore the old one.

Answer 2

Most likely a SPAM engine is sending out mail and forging your information to show it as coming from you.

It is also possible that you are infected ...



Top 3 free AV products

Avast

Avira

AVG



Best Paid:

My recent survey of several independent testing labs shows Kaspersky and BitDefender as the top 2 paid AV products.



How to remove a virus -

I) The best solution is to back up your data and perform a factory restore. Install a reputable AV program after the restore and download the latest updates before restoring your data.



II) That not being practical for many, try either of the next two methods:

(Please note that it is important to use one of these two methods as you need to boot and scan knowing that no viruses are already in memory. If you try and install an AV product on a machine already infected then there is a decent chance that the virus will be able to hide/relocate from the scanner.)



A)

1) On a clean computer, download 1 or more free bootable AV products. Five I know of are Avira, AVG, Avast, Kaspersky, and G Data. Often referred to as a Rescue Disc.



(There is a handy product called sardu (www.sarducd.it) which will create a flash drive/Cd capable of having multiple AV products built into it. It isn't perfect yet, but it does do the job pretty well. I keep a copy on a flash drive for whenever I go to someone's house to help with computer problems and I have a number of other diagnostic tools included as well.)



2) Create the bootable media and include the latest virus definitions

3) Boot the infected/suspect computer by using the bootable media and run a full/complete/deep scan of the computer using preferably at least two different ones. No AV product gets them all, but 2 different products should find and remove just about anything.



B) Alternative method:

1) remove the hard drive from the infected computer

2) slave the drive to a clean computer which already has at least one AV product already installed with the most current definitions. You can do this by installing it into the case (for a desktop) or by putting the drive in an external drive case which you can get for the low teens $. These can be USB (get at least USB 2.0) or eSata - if the 2nd computer has an eSata connection.



3) From the clean machine, run a full/complete scan of the slaved hdd. The computer should already be booted when you connect the external drive, with the AV product already in residential memory (it will have an icon down next to the clock). Then open the AV and run it on the drive. In an ideal world, you should really use two different AV products.



III) If you are unable to do the above, then download and install an AV product and then run it at its deepest level scan. This is not the ideal method as many viruses can hide from AV products if they are already in memory and running before the AV software is executed. There are numerous free ones. I strongly recommend two different AV products and one Adware/Spyware product. For free AV, I would typically recommend Avira, AVG, or Avast as the installed resident (always running) AV solution and Malwarebytes as a secondary, on demand AV product which I run on a weekly basis. For Spyware and Adware, the two top performers there are AdAware (Lavasoft.com) and Spybot Search and Destroy (safer-networking.org) Both offer a free and paid version. The free version is good, the paid version offers more bells and whistles, just like with the AV products.



Once the virus(es) is/are removed, change any and all passwords having to do with anything important like e-mail, financial-banking logins, etc. as those have probably been captured and sent to the author of the virus.

Answer 3

first off they are lieing... as long as you did not purposely do this they cant prove anything.