can get virus on webmail?

[bobjim]

Hi all,
Quick question that may be obvious but I'm not exactly technologically brilliant! I checked a hotmail account of mine and found dozens of "recipient not found" type emails. Upon investigation, it seems that 3 spam emails were sent from my hotmail account on Wednesday 25th June to loads of people, mainly .fr domains.

I thought that webmail systems could not get computer viruses - is that right? Should I be worried i.e. is there any chance of problems on my computer? I use AVG and Zonealarm as security.

Any pointers as to how to follow this up (tech forums?) would be appreciated. I guess a change of password on the account is a minimum? Any thing else I can do or should I not worry?

Cheers,
bobjim

 

[ClubMan]

Hotmail can be accessed via Outlook Express and Windows Live Mail (and other Hotmail WebDAV clients such as the webmail plugin for Thunderbird) and not just via the web interface so that might be one possibility. Another might be that somebody simply compromised your address and password. Maybe change your password just to be on the safe side?

 

[Technologist]

"recipient not found" type emails. Upon investigation, it seems that 3 spam emails were sent from my hotmail account on Wednesday 25th June to loads of people, mainly .fr domains.

Your account may not be compromised at all. Some spammers send you mails that are made to appear to be 'bounces' of mails as this trick sometimes gets past spam filters.

The messages probably were not sent from your account at all, they just look like they were.