Spam Sent to all my contacts

[johnrosenburg]

I recently logged into an old hotmail account of mine that I havn't used for several years, actually with the intent to close the account, as I no longer use Hotmail. To my surprise, it appears that my account has been hacked. The following seems to have happened:

• The name of the account holder appears to have been changed
• Spam was sent to all of my contacts (although I only had two contacts)
• It Says that my profile was "suspended"

The Spam was sent out in 2011, and nothing appears to have happened since.
Both of the two emails that were sent seemed to try to get the person who opened them to click on the same link. However, the two emails had different messages. (In other words they were not identical, however they were very similar).

Anyway, now to my question...
How could this have happened?
My password is very strong and is not something I believe people would guess as it uses letters, numbers (no birth dates or anything like that) and symbols.

I am very careful browsing, and believe there is almost no way that I clicked on a phishing site.
So what other things could have happened? The only thing that I can think of is maybe I got a virus or something? If this is the case, is it likely that it recorded everything that I did on my computer, including documents I have typed for work, spreadsheets that I have made, etc... Or is it most likely that it only did something related to my email?

Thank you very much

 

[EQ Admin]

Hello,

Yes, a virus/spyware are a possibility.

If the hacker was able to guess your password reset information, for example gathering information from Facebook posts, they might get in.

If you used your Hotmail email address and the same password as a login at another site that was compromised that could have obtained your login info.

I recommend changing your password and verifying that the alternate email address and account reset information Q&A's are information that you created.

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