I have two questions:

1) Someone (I know who it is) keeps getting into my hotmail account - I regularly change the password but it doesn't seem to make any difference, I've been told you can buy passwords for almost any email address online, does anyone know anything about this and if there's anything I can do to either prevent this or have a secure email account?
2) The same person sent me an email under a pseudonym and hotmail deleted the content from it, there was an attachment named svr.exe - is this a virus?

Thanks for any help you can give me :-)

You can change your password,but if someone knows the answer to your secret question they can get the password.Change your secret question when you change the password.

Thanks, but the secret question isn't really secure as there is absolutely no way this person could ever know my answer to it. The service on the internet that I was referring to claims that you can enter someone's email address and they will give you their password, it sounds dodgy, but I can't see any other way that he could know it.

Thanks for replying though :-)

Try opening another mail account.Gmail or whatever you want and see if they gain access to it.Everyone I know with hotmail has had this proublem.

Thanks, I'll try that :-)

Hi Jessica,

'Buying' passwords is news to me. But then I don't frequent the dark world of hackage & crackage.

Get a real [POP] mail acct and stay away from the best known webmail: hotmail /yahoo and all that crap.

The are plenty of free POPs. For $15 or less you can get your own domain.

M2

If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

Thanks M2, that's a great idea!

Hi Jessica,

I just did a whois search and jessicarobertz.com is available.

My favorite registrar:

http://www.directnic.com/search/index.cgi?q=jessicarobertz&Submit2.x=0&Submit2.y=0&Submit2=Search&search=linguatron

And, no, I'm not working for them.

;)

M2

If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

Has this person ever had physical access to your computer? Or is there any chance that you could have ever run software this person gave you (as an email attachment, e.g.). If they are running a keylogger on your computer - which it kind of seems like they are; there is nothing inherent in Hotmail that should allow them to compromise your password repeatedly - then changing mail providers isn't going to do you much good.

You can change all the email providers you want,and to add to what jimminy said that you possibly have a keylogger,or a Trojan in your pc,and by changing your email provider,or password a million times isnt going to help you unless you flush out your pc of snoops.

I would recommend that you scan your pc with Tds 3 while in Safemode,and with system restore turned off,but make sure that all programs are fully updated before you scan your pc.
,---- TDS-3 CLICK HERE!....

You should also scan your pc with Spybot,Ad-aware,Microsoft antispyware form here----- SPYWARE TOOLS!!....

The file svr.exe that you provided comes back as a trojan horse.If the programs that are listed fail to detect,and clean your pc of the infection(s)?then we will have to manualy delete the infection(s).You should also download Hijack this from the Spyware tools link i provided,and copy and paste a log,and submitt it to spywarewarrior click me!/a....or,you can send me the log personally via email for evaluation.

I would also be concerned that you may have a trojan running on your computer.

I'd follow Joe's advice to make sure that isn't the case.

HTH,
J.B.

Hmm, the only computer I use is at work - I don't have one at home and there is absoluely no way he could have gained access to it. The only email I've ever received from him was the one I specified in the first message, and I deleted it immediately - Hotmail had deleted the attachment.
Also, today I tried to log into MSN messenger and hotmail and my password has been changed and so has my secret question!!! So of course I don't know the answer to the question to be able to reset the password and am completely unable to log in. This is so frustrating.
My sister has had to change her email account about 4 times in the last couple of months as he keeps getting into that too. Maybe I should start writing letters instead :-(

Your email account has been hijacked. The bad news is that you gave them your password.

Here's how it works:

I send you an email with a link, when you click my link, it displays the MSN signon page and says that to view the desired link you must sign in. ..and you do, without thinking about it.

The bad news is that you were never at the MSN signon page. You were really at a web page I created to LOOK like theirs. When you signed in, you gave me your password.

All I have to do is change the password and secret question. Your account is now mine and there is nothing you can do about it.

_________________________
The internet is no longer a toy, it's a COMBAT ZONE!

How does that explain this?

>>I regularly change the password but it doesn't seem to make any difference

It explains what he did, causing the problem she has in the second paragraph of Response #11.

Unfortunately your original account is lost forever.

Create a new one. Add MSN Homepage to your favorites. Only sign in through their homepage, not from other links.

Vast numbers of people are responding to links and GIVING away their passwords.
_________________________
The internet is no longer a toy, it's a COMBAT ZONE!

Thanks for all your replies, however I'd just like to know if anyone knows about buying passwords over the internet and if it's possible. I have searched the internet and there are a million websites offering this, but obviously don't want to waste my money trying it and it's probably illegal to. Is it possible that amongst all these websites offering this that may be scams, that maybe one of them is able to do this for real for whatever amount of money...?

The real question is not if passwords can be purchased, but how are the passwords obtained by the people who may be selling them. If anyone is doing this, they are likely using one of the techniques described in this thread.

Hard to figure why anybody would pay much for a PW unless the acct holder was a VIP.

Since you're using an office PC, get POPcon:

http://www.ultrafunk.com/products/popcorn/

Keep it on a floppy. End of exercise.

M2

If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

Hello Jessica,
I'm not sure what you're exactly after as there has been a few suggestions from people on how to address your problem including starting a new account. You seem to be really interested on buying passwords yourself? If you really have the problem you are suggesting then start a new hotmail account and start again.

"You seem to be really interested on buying passwords yourself?"

If that's a question, what's the question?

M2

If at first you don't succeed, you're about average.

What's your problem Mechanix2Go?