Help - my Yahoo mail account is outputting spam

[PeterK]

I have 2 email accounts - one Yahoo and one corporate. I use both an iPad and an iPhone for my daily use as well as a company computer. All my contacts are listed on my Apple devices and corporate account. Somehow my Yahoo mail account is broadcasting occasional junk but only to contacts that I have used with the Yahoo mail, not any from the corporate account. These emails don't show up in my Sent folder and I only know of them as it also sends this junk to my company email address.

Is there any way to stop this without having to cancel this email account? I have this email tied to many things like purchasing, banking, benefits and such so if I cancel it I would have to try to remember everything it is tied to to change.

Thanks for any suggestions. Pete

 

[DKurzweil]

Try changing your password to something longer and with at least one each letter, numeral, special character (@, #, &)

This may stop the junk from going out as it is sometimes related to someone else having your email access information.

Daniel

 

[KevinHanna]

Email unfortunately is a relatively old technology and not well thought out by today's standards.  It's simple to make email look like it came from your account.  If they have your contacts already they can send them email as you with our without your account.  The fact that it's coming with your email address as the "from" somebody they know means its more likely to get through spam filters.

Change your email account password, don't cancel it.  Scan your computer for Trojans.

 

[PeterK]

Thanks guys for the replies. I changed the password. Will wait and see if it helps!

 

[PaulMarcel]

There are several good spyware and virus scanners that are free.  On Windows, Microsoft Security Essentials is great.  ClamAV on Mac is good.  It could be a browser plug-in that waits for you to be on your Yahoo! mail page then steals the cookie to send as you.  You might want to disable all browser plug-ins you have.

 

[rrmccabe]

Is a known Yahoo problem and has been for a while. For whatever reason is must be pretty easy to spoof Yahoo email. 

I have had several customers call with the same issue and after looking at the originating IP in the mail header the sender is usually in some third word country.

My advice to everyone is to dump Yahoo as its been going on for a few years and doesn't seem to be slowing down.

I really have not dug into the actual issue but can tell you its common.

 

[atlr]

Here is an explanation of the latest breach of Yahoo email.
http://news.yahoo.com/why-yahoo-mail-accounts-being-hijacked-004126309.html

A good piece of advice in this article is to "always log out of Yahoo Mail (and any other online account) when you're done using it. That ends your session and renders the session cookies useless."