You thought getting spam was bad...

I originally started this in OT, so for when this gets moved to the security and antivirus area here is a bit more info...
This morning all my contacts in my hotmail email account received a spam message from me (see below). According to the timestamp on these sent messages, it appears this happened right when I turned my computer on this morning. That leads me to believe (thanks spacemanspiff for pointing this out) that I've got some kind of an infection on my computer... Right now I have Avast antivirus and winpatrol as well as all the protection things that are default in windows vista business. What kind of program would I need to get rid of this infection? (preferably free, or cheap, nothing too expensive..)

I just ran a virus scan using avast antivirus, it detected nothing. Ran spybot search and destroy, it came back with 75 suspicious items (cookies) so I removed those. As far as I know, cookies cannot contain executable code (right?) so those 75 items were probably not the culprit...

I'm mainly worried about the possibility of having something like a keylogger on my machine stealing my banking info and stuff like that, not so much this email account since I don't really use it anymore...

The original message from OT is below (you can probably ignore the first two pages since they were from OT).......
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Well, apparently I send spam. This is the email all my contacts are getting from me:

Dear,
I found a nice site recently.I am sure you will like it,it is really wonderful.It sells electronic products.
I have bought some products from this company.The price was very cheap,and the products have very good quality.
Please do have a look at this web page : [email address removed]
I am sure you will save lots of money.
Best regards,

Now I have to go through the trouble of deleting this account (hopefully that's possible) and getting everything setup for a new account... ugh

 

Gmail for all your antispam needs. Have not received one piece of spam since 2005.

Sad to see the quality of spam going downhill, it's like they're not trying at all anymore. But I'm sure at least someone will visit the site.

 

Ever since the big spam server in CA was shut down the spam has gone down a lot, I have never had spam with gmail.

 

I just opened up a new Gmail account a couple weeks ago and the only person I've given the address out to was one college for an application. Today I just got a piece of spam in some foreign language in that account. So I wouldn't say Gmail is immune, it's just really unlikely. My MSN account though is another story...

Good luck though with your problem.

 

well some one got a drive by

 

Knock on wood i rarely if ever get SPAM in my email accounts and i have quite an extensive amount of people/companies that have my addy.

Though once i had a yahoo account cracked and the jerk starting using my ebay account to sell Folex watches. Luckily i caught it in time to destroy the auctions and now have a 22 alpha numeric password on everything. So baring insane luck or the roadrunner supercomputer trying to brute force me i think i'm pretty safe

One of my cousins recently did get a SPAM bot and it started sending me all sorts of crap. So i banned his email until he could get it back under control.

 

Gmail is not immune to spam, it's just that it's filter is so strong that I have never gotten a spam mail in my inbox.

This is what I have done, I've created a Gmail account, which I use anywhere it's needed, like websites registration etc, and then I've created another Gmail account, and I've added the previous account in this one. This account no one knows of, except me. I get all my mails here, I can post from the previous account's address, and no spam!

 

Fittersman:

Are you saying you are sending this from your home computer, or from a web-based email site ?

 

Ditto.

I use one for general web stuff, one for business related stuff, one for personal contacts.

 

I never got ANY spam with gmail...
that is until a "friend" decided to use my email for a "free pink mac book air"...

 

Lolz, did you at least end up getting the free macbook?

 

No idea, one of my friends just pointed out that one of the emails he got from me was this one. Then I went and looked in my sent box and there were piles of this email going out to almost everyone...

I have a new gmail account, that's the replacement. So far after about a year of having it I think it's great.

I deleted all my contacts though, so hopefully the spam bot can't do anything anymore...

 

By "sent box", are you referring to your email client (Windows Mail, Outlook Express, Eudora, whatever) ?

If so, it sounds like your machine is infected with something.

 

lol, what do you think? xD

she said that it said "enter your social security number for verification" and she exited xD

 

Well, I guess a virus scan can't hurt. I'll run one now... Might have to look for some spyware/malware scanners too because that's probably what this is, correct?

On that note, what kind of free spyware/malware things are out there?

Must be a fairly good virus (or spyware or whatever) to get onto this machine with all the blockers and stuff I have on it.

 

PM a mod and we can move this to the "Security and Anti-Virus" forum if you so wish.

 

The time stamp on these messages says it happened today when I first started my computer... I think you are right, sounds like I have an infection to deal with

 

Have a look at:
http://www.elitekiller.com/malware.htm

 

LoL... It's like it's being written by overseas ESL students or something. Here's one email I keep getting but can't get rid of:

And this is one of the newer ones. The older ones were just horrible...

 

Now that this is moved from OT, please ignore comments that do not relate the OP's problem.

Thanks.

 

I like that i communicate with most of my friends in swiss german, not an official language. there is no spam in that language => if they get something from me in english, it is definitely not from me

 

Swerman ... I like it