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Spam purporting to come from your own account
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It can be very worrying if you have received Spam that includes your own account name in the header field.
Your first suspicion may be that someone has hacked into your account in order to send you mail – or worse, in order to send other people e-mail that is allegedly from you.
The answer is that neither of these fears is likely to be real.
What has probably happened is that an unscrupulous company or an individual has been using a bulk mail programme to forge headers on to a particular e-mail message. The reason for going to these lengths is that it makes the e-mail appear to be authentic (and therefore people will open it) and it can also result in the item of mail bypassing some of the Hotmail filters.
Some of the forgeries add the recipient’s e-mail address (your address) or (your) account name into the header to try and make it appear more authentic.
It is offensive, and Hotmail is constantly trying to stamp out these practises. But first, rest assured that it is unlikely that anyone has broken in to your account; or sent you a computer virus; and it is also unlikely that your account has been used to send e-mail to other users.
- Sign in to your Hotmail account and click Options (next to help).
- On the left-hand column, select Personal.
- From the list presented click Password.
- Enter your old password, followed by your new password. Confirm your new password by typing it again, then click Continue.
- Once you see the confirmation page, click the Continue button to complete the process.
Click here for a visual guide
A tip on secure passwords:
Include numbers and characters in your passwords and utilise sounds to help you remember, for example Woo2u2. Try not to make your passwords contiguous, for example changing your password from password1 to password2, and don’t use the same password on different, non-MSN sites.
One thing you should be aware of is that you should not reply to any Spam mails, nor even open them if possible. The senders generate the mails on a purely random basis, and if you reply, you merely let them know that your email address is active.
We have actively pursued legal action against many individuals who forge addresses from the Hotmail domain and will continue to do so. If you wish to help us in this campaign, please help by forwarding unsolicited email to: abuse@hotmail.com
NOTE: Please ensure you include the full header of the offending mail – if you are unsure how to do this, please click here.
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