I think my question would probably fit here the best, although it's not strictly a linux question.

Couple of months ago I moved to a different city and started exchanging a lot of emails with a friend. We both have a hotmail email account. Immediatelly after we started the email exchange (with this particular friend), I started getting loads of spam. It's like, I started getting 15 a day, whereas before I was getting 2,3 a day. I didn't suspect anything, but I got tired of the spam, so I decided to shut down hotmail account, and instructed my friend to email me to my school email address. As soon as she sent the first email, spam started coming on that account as well. I didn't get a single spam message on that account untill her email.

Is this a coincidence or is she somehow a spam seed or something? She claims she has her antivirus software (she's a Windoze person) updated regularly, and the computer is perfectly clean. But can someone somehow hook up to her hotmail account and send stuff to everyone from her address-book list?

I tried to google on this subject but didn't find anything. I am curious to know how this stuff happens.

Despite her protestations of innocence, your friend has almost certainly got a virus or some sort of spyware that is catching all the email addresses she uses.

The only other possibility (apart from simple co-incidence (*)) is that her ISP's servers are infected, which is highly unlikely.

Antivirus software won't necessarily get find or rid of spyware, since it isn't strictly a virus, so get her to install some anti-spyware programs as well, and see what they find. It's a pretty good bet that it'll turn up something nasty -- and probably more than one.


(*) if you want to disprove the simple co-incidence theory, just set up a few extra email accounts, and get your friend to mail them all. The more spam you see after that, the less likely it is to be co-incidence.


Hope that helps.


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ps -- it probably doesn't make you feel any better, but I'd give my back teeth to have that little spam in a day! I run a couple of big web sites, and if I didn't have some aggressive filters in place, I'd be getting several hundred spams per day. Even with the filters, I still see a couple of dozen every day.
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A couple of weeks ago I cleaned my friends XP. It had up-to-date AOL spyware protection. So it should be clean, right? Spybot S&D found 26 pieces of spyware. You think it was clean now? Think again. Ewido found 5 more. Shall I assume it was clean after that? I do not know ...

Thanks guys.

What I still don't understand is this: it is a a hotmail account that she has. Meaning, she doesn't download emails from some email server and then uses Outlook Express, for example. All the email handling is done through Internet Explorer, on hotmail server. Is it still possible that a spyware *on her* machine is hooked up to her hotmail address book?

Frankie

Hotmail will give you some benefits, but there's nothing about it (or any other online mail system) that stops spyware from being able to read what's on your screen or what you type.