Yahoo account sent all my contacts an email with a link. What has happened?

Yahoo sent all my contacts list an email with just a link to click (which I am hoping no one did.)
I personally didn't send all my contacts an email. Most of them were bounced, thank God.

The only way I know this, was my hubby was sent one and he phoned me to ask me if I had sent him an email on
1 March 2012 at 4.20AM (in the Goddam morning.)
I replied no.
He then noticed the CC on top and the list was all my Yahoo groups and my personal contacts.

To be honest I haven't used that email account since Christmas, as it has been 'spammed to an inch of it's life'
And I am fed up with it.

Does my Yahoo email account have a virus or has someone hacked it?

What should I do next? Carry on as normal or delete the account?
Should I inform Yahoo?

(I will look in at night time as I have kids at home to look after and we have a rule of no PC before Supper.)

Thanks for any answers as this has me and my hubby stumped.

I don't think you Yahoo account has become infected (Is that even possible?), but what the most likely case is that your computer has been infected with a virus/spyware.

I don't have much time, someone else will be able to help with the removal, it's fairly straight forward.

Download/install anit virus software (I suggest Avast, but there are other that are just as good and free) > scan > remove virus > restart > download Malwarebytes anti malware removal tool > scan > remove malware > restart > get back to da interwebs.

Probably hacked.

Log in, change password. That's about all you can do.

reply to post by AriesJedi


If you find out the answer, please post or U2U me with your results. My wife's account at Yahoo has spammed out mail to her contacts 3 times in 6 months. The first password wasn't a toughie. The last ones were long Alphanumeric with punctuation and capitlization mixed in. The idea is was hacked is almost silly when she has no reason to be of specific interest to those who could do it at this point.

I don't want to speculate what they leaves...because there are libel laws, even for us posting here. I'd just love to know what you may find. Months of working on this mystery in an on/off way has yielded nothing concrete. Lots of theories...and the net seems to have no shortage..as always. I just can't find a solid fact for how it occurred the last 2 times.

reply to post by AriesJedi

If you suspect your Yahoo account has been hacked, changing the password should cure that.

I would look more at your own PC. Virus scanner installed and up to date? Firewall on? Latest windows updates installed?
ETA Yahoo pages on what to do too:
My account may have been comprimised
How can an account be compromised

reply to post by SnedsDawg


Yep, virus/malware is another possibility. There are a number of free products available on cNet to resolve that possibility.

That's happened to me before, too. On Yahoo and Hotmail both. I'm not sure how it happens, but it's not your computer. It's on the mail server side. Wouldn't hurt to send Yahoo a notice and change your password.

edit: The reason I say it's not your computer is because when it happened to me, I was using gmail and hadn't opened my Yahoo account for several months.

This has happened a few times on my yahoo email account. I theorized it had something to do with yahoo messenger. While logged into yahoo mail I looked at all of the settings and saw that I was currently logged in to messenger. I logged out.

Days later my yahoo mail account sent out a spam message to all of my contacts. I know this because it also sent it to an alternate email I use daily. Upon logging into yahoo I saw that I was once again logged in to messenger. Considering the yahoo layout was different when this occurred, you might have a different set of options. Under the settings for messenger there was something along the lines of always being signed in or something similar. I made sure that I was never signed in and that everyone was blocked that wasn't on my contacts list. I also went through my contacts list and removed anyone who I did not recognize. I then changed my password.

This bizarre Yahoo behavior happened 5 times before the above steps stopped it from happening again. Your mileage may vary, but do give it a try.

Yup...its been going around on Yahoo for a longtime. Its weird - its always spammed emails from guys in my fantasy football league about Canadian hard-on pills at a discount price. lmao

Maybe its not spam...or you get the Mailer Daemon failure & i'm like i didn't send an email in the last 30 days & you take a look & the email was sent in like '09. Whatever...there is some guy in Bulgaria or China laughing his ass off.

Thankyou so much for your replies.

I have Macafree (?) used to have Norton Gold but my last laptop got water damaged and i lost the online number for my Norton account. But I don't think I have a virus.

I haven't been on this email account since Christmas '11, so the theory about the Yahoo messanger, I thinks fits the best, because when we opened the Yahoo account, two message's popped up from no one I knew.

SO I am going to try the closing the messanger thing and hope that cures it.

Thanks everyone.