Weekly released mini-blogs featuring signs you may be hacked and how to fix them.
Your friends receive fake emails that look like they come from you.
It’s fairly common for our email friends to receive malicious emails that appear to come from us. A decade ago when attaching viruses to emails was all the rage with hackers, it was very common for these viruses to infect your computer and send malicious emails to everyone in your address book.
These days, malware programs and hackers often get email addresses and contact lists from social media sites. When they do this they obtain a very incomplete list of your contacts and their email addresses. So it is more common for malicious emails to be sent to some of your friends but not everyone in your address book.
If just a few of your friends report receiving bogus emails claiming to come from you, then more than likely your computer hasn’t been compromised by an email address-hunting malware program. Although not always the case, the bogus emails they send to your friends often don’t have your email address as the sender – it may have your name, but not your correct email address. If this is the case, then usually your computer is safe.
WHAT TO DO – BEFORE INFECTION
- Make sure your software is completely patched and up to date. Enable automatic update features in your Operating System and software applications.
- Make regular backups.
- Do your due diligence and run a complete antivirus scan on your computer
- Looking for unwanted installed programs and toolbars.
- Tell your friends to do the same.
WHAT TO DO – AFTER INFECTION
- Power down your computer. If you need to save anything, do so.
- Boot up the computer system in Safe Mode, No Networking, and try to uninstall the newly installed software. Oftentimes it can be uninstalled like a regular program.
- Restore a system backup from a state previous to infection or experiencing the pop-ups.
- Test the computer in regular mode and make sure that infection.
- Then follow up with a complete antivirus scan. Oftentimes, the scanner will find other remnants left behind and clean those up.
- Enable your browser’s ad-blocking features.
Often it’s nothing to worry about as long as nobody clicks on links in the emails or opens any attachments – make sure you delete suspicious emails immediately. It’s important to understand and for your friends to understand that this is not your fault; your computer is not infected.