Need Help Getting rid of a Virus!

[muscle96ss]

On sunday night/monday morning my computer sent out an e-mail to everyone in my AOL address book whose address began with a "z" and continued through the letter d(why it didn't sent out any to people begginning with a,b, or c I don't know). I ran Malware bytes, McAfee, and Spybot and found absolutely no infections, threats, etc.. so I figured maybe everything is ok. Well now sometime tuesday night/wednesday morning my computer sent out another e-mail; this time to all the addresses beginning with a "C" in my address book. So once again I ran Malware bytes and still nothing detected. Anybody got any ideas on what the hell to do next??? I am pretty illiterate when it comes to computers so I don't even know where to start to find the problem.

 

[Jello]

Go in and change your password to your email account.

 

[tri-terror]

I'm with Jello. Doesn't sound the the problem is actually on your PC. Someone hacked your email account though. Change your password ASAP and see if it happens again.

 

[lookatpicture]

if the password change does not work download microsoft security essentials. the software is free and extremely effective

 

[rmtt]

Go in and change your password to your email account.

+1.

I have seen this more times than I can remember.

 

[muscle96ss]

There is no password to my e-mail account, it is part of my AOL screen name. I am pretty sure it is a virus because I just found out that the same thing happened to my wifes laptop last week and on sunday she sent me an e-mail with an attatchment that I downloaded(it is one of our bills that goes to her e-mail address so she just forwards it to me). It was then that same night that the problem started. Also, that same evening my McAfee gave me an error message and said that it needed to shut down; was wierd as I have never had that message before.

Also, I didn't check to see what the content of the e-mail I am sending is, but my wife says that the one she was sending would say something like, "need a bigger dick" and then have a link.

 

[tri-terror]

Well your AOL password then. If you ran a mcafee scan and your system came up clean I don't know what else it could be.
Why is your wife forwarding you spam like that?

 

[muscle96ss]

Well your AOL password then. If you ran a mcafee scan and your system came up clean I don't know what else it could be.
Why is your wife forwarding you spam like that?

She didn't forward me spam, she forwarded me our landscaping bill that comes to her e-mail address in PDF format.

 

[muscle96ss]

Wow, I think it may be that my e-mail account was hacked after all. The reason being is that all the mail that I send and receive is automatically saved to my PC(as well as on AOL). When I look at my "sent" mail from AOL is shows all the bogus e-mails that were sent. Then when I look at my "sent" mail that is saved on my PC none of them are there. In other words, they were not sent from this computer unless the virus somehow deletes the e-mails it sends from my computer. I have changed my password and we will see what happens next.

 

[rmtt]

I'm assuming that you have an AOL e-mail account, and also using an application on your PC such as Outlook or anything else that will work with POP3/IMAP.

The e-mail client on your PC is typically just pointing to the AOL account with an option to leave a copy of the e-mails on the server so that you have it in both places. Also good for phones when setup this way as both are downloading from the AOL Mail Server.

What I am getting at...after all of the above is that if you change your password on the AOL side, you will also have to change the configuration on your e-mail application runnning on your PC...or it will not connect to the server as it is still trying to use the old password.

 

[rmtt]

But then again...I think you already know about that side of things.

 

[muscle96ss]

I'm assuming that you have an AOL e-mail account, and also using an application on your PC such as Outlook or anything else that will work with POP3/IMAP.

Actually I am not using outlook and not sure what POP3/IMAP is. When it comes to computers I am pretty stupid.

 

[GeneralClean]

POP3/IMAP are protocols that E-mail clients and servers use to send and recieve e-mails.

 

[rmtt]

POP3/IMAP are protocols that E-mail clients and servers use to send and recieve e-mails.

^

A lot of people that have personaly e-mail accounts will use a 3rd party application on their computer to access the server directly.

That saves them the hassle of having to go to the server and log in to get e-mails. And it also gives them the ability to do more things like personalize their views.

 

[hemipower]

Same thing happened to me...both my personal email accounts sent out a TON of emails to random people (some of which I am no longer in contact with for GOOD reason) in my contacts!

I was out of town for a business trip when one email did it...changed that password and 3 days after I get back, the other one does it. Changed that password too. Worried me...obvious reasons.

 

[bubbafrombama]

Jello is right!

Using AOL, go to keyword "password" and change your AOL account password. This is VERY common on AOL (and many other email providers). Change your password to something stronger, such as numbers and letters, and capitalize a letter or two.