Recently, some of my friends have been unknowingly sending strange emails from their Yahoo accounts. The emails, which contain a link to a suspicious website, are being sent to all email addresses registered in their contact lists.
If you've been victimized like some of my friends, you might think that someone has hacked into your account. However, because of the viral way and the extent to which the problem has spread, it is more likely that a virus or automated spam bots are the culprit.
In case you are experiencing this kind of problem, here are some of the things that you should do.
1. Run a full virus scan of your computer using two or more anti-virus and anti-malware software. If you have no antivirus software yet, try the free versions of AVG and Avast.
2. Using a clean PC (preferably another computer), change your Yahoo account password to a stronger one. Strong passwords are those that are at least 8 characters in length and are composed of letters and NUMBERS.
3. Just to be safe, change the password of other online accounts (especially bank accounts) where you use your yahoo mail address as your contact email. Better yet, register another email address as your contact email.
4. Inform all your contacts and advise them not to open or click the link contained in the spam email previously sent through your account.
5. Put your own email address in your contact list so that you'll notice it soon enough when another breach occurs.
6. Consider using other email services. Based on personal experience, Gmail has better spam filtering functions than Yahoo mail.
7. If possible, do not use the contact list or address book of your yahoo account. Export your contact list to a CSV file and delete all the email addresses in your contact list. Now, every time you compose a new mail, just copy the email address from your CSV file. Alternatively, you may store your contact list in draft emails.
If you have other recommendations, please do not hesitate to leave a comment to this article.