unauthorised email sending

Try Grif's advice at http://forums.cnet.com/5208-7813_102-0.html?messageID=3290628&tag=contentMain;contentBody#3290628

The CNET Spyware forum may be your next choice.
Bob

It appears that someone has hacked into MS Hotmail and is spamming my "contact list" from there. Fortunately it's not a very large list.

I was in Spain when it started and running on a new Acer One netbook (Win XP). The computer came with McAfee installed and running (USED to be a good program!!!! Prefer others now). My Internet connection was very poor so the computer was hardly ever on. So I am thinking that they hacked Hotmail - probably a lot easier to do!!

I have tried tracing these emails but they "appear" to originate in Brazil, Israel, Romania, etc. These emails simply contain a link and generally have no subject but I recently received one with "Hi!" as the subject so you can't rely on that.

I suspect they are coming from Lycos.com (Angelfire.com is a site that they host) and they have cooperated by cutting off one of them but I'm afraid there are too many origins. Lycos is one of the largest ISPs in the World and hosts 100's of websites - so a very difficult thing to combat!

The good news is that these emails appear to be harmless but that begs the question - What is their purpose??

I am on my own contact list (hmm.. good idea?) so I see what is going out also.

The bad news is that I risk being blocked as a "Spammer"!!! Already I cannot reach my daughter thru' her business email.

A local PC Users Group recommended installing Advanced System Care from CNET's Download.com. ASC rescues hijacked email addresses and protects them from further hijackings.

It really works. We used to get 300 returned undeliverable emails a month. A Chinese spammer had sent them out under our name. One run of ASC and the problem was solved.