My yahoo account which I've had for years has been hijacked. It has sent spam messages to everyone in my contact list. On a couple of them it sent back delivery failure noticed which I THINK has the original address it was sent from.
I use yahoo to prevent viruses from opening on my computer when checking e-mails. I thought because it was web based if I happened to open a buggy e-mail it wouldn't affect the computer....because it was online...also yahoo does a virus check before you open any attachments.

Am I wrong in assuming that?
How did they use my info to send all those e-mails...I am going to have some upset friends if they think I sent them this trash.
Do I need to scan my computer?
Will I have to make a new e-mail account?

Sorry for all the questions I've not had it happen before...

Should I report this to yahoo and if I do will they do anything about it?

Cheers
I am sure to think of more questions...but that should be enough for the meantime.

I looked up the  IP address and it is for Virgina in the USA on one of the failure notices...not like that will  do me any good but I reported to yahoo and gave them the IP and other (hopefully) identifying info.

Hi,

Not sure if its connected but remembered seeing this News story in the papers this week regards Hotmail, G mail and Yahoo e mail accounts.
HTH?

Just read this article (HG's link) now and in the comments down below someone says that it is all down to people being silly and opening up an e-mail then giving their password and log in details.  I am sure it is not as simple as that.  I have a Yahoo e-mail account and I have had to sign on quite a few times in the last few weeks when normally it keeps me signed in for ages.  However when I sign in there is a little picture that I put there to verify it is really Yahoo who is asking me.  

Trouble is my computer is crashing on a regular basis and all sites where I am kept signed in - like CD reverted back to sign in.  That gets a pain because I do use different sign-in details everytime.   I was worried that my computer was under attack though - tried to do a virus check and it crashed each time I tried.  Luckily today it has completed at second attempt.  Time to get the computer to the repair shop I think. 

Thanks for that link.
I will change my passwords but I never click links in e-mails I do not know. With my yahoo mail I always type it in direct before signing in.

I will be more aware.
I am running a virus scan at the moment so will see what happens.
Cheers

> Should I report this to yahoo and if I do will they do anything about it?

Happened to me a year or so ago, I had used it for about 7 years.

They didn't reply to my email complaining about the problem, so I stopped using it until this year,, when I resumed, thinking all would be well.  It happened again this summer.

>

Freewayz - I had a problem last week with my hotmail account. I very rarely use it and hadn't been into it for a least 2 weeks therfore didn't open any emails via it. After reading the problems in the news on the net I went into my account. The problem email seems to have emailed itself out to everybody in my contacts all by itself - I never opened it. As a result I have deleted all my contacts in case it happens again. I also changed my password.

also this is happening on facebook accounts, you will get an email saying someone has posted something onyour wall, or someone has make a comment etc and whenyou open it a virus is released so please watch for this one as well

Surely anti-virus software will stop this?  I went onto a popular site today to see reviews of white goods.  Straight away my software stopped me saying they have detected a virus.  It's really important to buy the best software you can afford because there are lots of crooks out there.