I woke up this morning to see that I received a few hundred BS emails on my address and that I sent a few hundred emails as well. I changed the password to the account. Is there anything else I should do? Should I close the account? And, the password I use is pretty convoluted. I can't imagine anybody figuring it out. How does something like this happen?
A lot of times they don't even need to know your password, only that your email address is valid and they send mail from your account through a "re-mailer".
you sometimes only get the bounce backs (undeliverable 550 relay messages or otherwise undeliverable) message codes). I'm surprised the actual sent messages show up in your sent mail (if they do).
if the emails show up in your sent mail - delete them.
but due to your Internet footprint and action exposing
your email handle. That is what you need to focus
on. Freely giving up your info is where most run afoul.
Consider using a disposable email handle for certain classifications of interactions on the net. More than likely you have given and entrusted your PII to some merchant and they do not have adequate security policies and mechanisms to protect your information. If you are installing your credit card and other personal detail on merchants in this day and age you are quite frankly...insane.
Are you saying you wouldn't use a credit card buying on the web or just storing a credit card ? I never agree to have a card number stored (if they ask) but sometimes they retain the number without asking
Are you saying you wouldn't use a credit card buying on the web or just storing a credit card ? I never agree to have a card number stored (if they ask) but sometimes they retain the number without asking
you're going to get those and if the actual email messages do not appear in your sent mail, your email was not likely hacked.
What happened is likely what I described in my post, your email address was somehow obtained by spammers, could be from anywhere - someone you emailed, someone who had your email address in their contact list who was hacked, some site you registered for, etc.
and what they do is send spam to potentially millions of people from your email account. they do this because your ISP or email provider might confirm the email as valid and that's all it takes to send the email.
in this case the damage is done, you're going to receive the undeliverable messages for a while, because they don't know if the spam messages recipients are valid or not. and they don't care.
I'd change your password like you've done and if you're using an email program set it up to Not allow email relaying and to require a password/authentication when sending mail.
and check your sent mail, any messages not sent by you delete and delete all your deleted mail folder if it's not deleted already.
if....the problem is what I think it is - your email address was spoofed.
First Hillary, now Samiam. Who's next?