Thursday 10 April 2014

Spam...

My Gmail account appears to have been compromised in some way. I logged into my account this evening to reply to some messages and was suddenly in receipt of a number of "failed send" messages. I then received an e-mail from a contact, saying that the content might be a virus. I checked my outbox and reported 84 messages spam as they were not sent by me. I read some of them and they seemed to be about Harry Potter.

If anybody is in receipt of any spam/suspicious e-mails from my Gmail account, I apologise unreservedly. I have changed the password to the account as a precaution but I fear this might have something to do with the fact that we don't, currently, have anti-virus software. In all honesty, we can't afford it at the moment.

I don't know what else to suggest other than that it might be worthwhile deleting any messages you receive from my Gmail account unread within the next few days until I get a response from Google.

4 comments:

  1. You can find a decent antivirus for free. Avast (www.avast.com) is the one I use, but if you find that it doesn't help, you might require a clean-up software like Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (https://www.malwarebytes.org/). Malwarebytes is a strong specific tool for spyware (which is the kind of virus you have), but doesn't offer real-time protection (it only cures, but doesn't prevent). Avast on the other hand checks everything you open.

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  2. Or something like AVG which has a free version too.

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  3. I have had the same experience recently. Anti-virus helps (I use AVG) but it's not foolproof.

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  4. I hope Avast works for you. If not, you could consider using Linux. Not that Linux is free from malware! It is a risk there too, but there are steps you can take to protect yourself. Wikipedia has an article on the risks and tools that you can use to help defend yourself.

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