You are reading a single comment by @s.walrus and its replies.
Click here to read the full conversation.
London Fixed Gear and Single-Speed is a community of predominantly fixed gear and single-speed cyclists in and around London, UK.
This site is supported almost exclusively by donations. Please consider donating a small amount regularly.
@s.walrus
There is a very common misconception about this sort of thing.
While it is possible you've picked up some malware that is posting email using your account credentials, it is unlikely. Normally what happens is these emails are just faking the headers to look like they come from you, so they appear authentic to spam filters.
Malware doesn't like to be found, and using the email credentials of the host pc is a sure give away. It is more likely when of your friends has the malware, and this picked up your address in their contacts. Also spammers buy/sell email addresses, if they get their hands on any email with a big cc list, they will keep this info, and use one address from the list as a send/return address to spam the rest.
I'd still run a full scan of your system, but what you've experienced often is not the result of hacking or malware. Some one else probably has a problem, or has been indiscreet with a cc list.
I've had the same mis-use of my email address in spam headers, and my email has (as far as I know) never been compromised.