E-Mail and Xfinity Connect Help

[kjacobsen04]

My husband's email was hacked yesterday. The emails going out were a message from someone pretending to be him, saying he was stranded in Madrid after being robbed, and didn't have money to pay hotel/get back....with a request to wire money. We resetr the account, but all "sent' and "inbox" are gone, so no way of knowing what kind of hack this was. Does anyone know anything about this particular scam? Did/could the hacker have gotten anything more than the contact list? (Like access to emails, attahments, financial information?) Thanks. And, while the Comcast rep said she'd post a trouble ticket, we haven't heard anything from Comcast and are feeling pretty vulnerable now with little more help than "change your password"

[madylarian]

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kjacobsen04 wrote:

My husband's email was hacked yesterday. The emails going out were a message from someone pretending to be him, saying he was stranded in Madrid after being robbed, and didn't have money to pay hotel/get back....with a request to wire money. We resetr the account, but all "sent' and "inbox" are gone, so no way of knowing what kind of hack this was. Does anyone know anything about this particular scam? Did/could the hacker have gotten anything more than the contact list? (Like access to emails, attahments, financial information?) Thanks. And, while the Comcast rep said she'd post a trouble ticket, we haven't heard anything from Comcast and are feeling pretty vulnerable now with little more help than "change your password"

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That's one of the many often-used phishing ploys used to get money.  As must be obvious from this and many other threads in the forum this has happened to a lot of people.  In fact, it's happened to other web-based email suppliers as well, including Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo.  Spammers used online email accounts to sen spam/scams to everyone in the accounts' addressbooks.  To be honest, no one has been forthcoming about it so we don't really know what happened or how and the only advice given so far has been to change your password.  This is the same advice given by Microsoft and Google, as well as Comcast.  That's about all you can do.

mady

[tjcraMS]

My e-mail took a malware hit from what I read.  IT was sending spam messages to my address book and are showing in my sent folder.  I changed my password as suggested by a link on this discussion to no avail.  The ads that appear on the right side of the e-mail are now flashing off and on on the left hand side of the screen and very annoying.  I also reset my modem and again no help. 

Can someone please tell me how to get my Smartzone e-mail back to normal? 

Thanks! 

[tjcraMS]

I did call Norton as Comcast suggested but they did not find any viruses on my computer but the problem was still there. 

I picked up my problem from a spam e-mail I received from a friend.  I tried deleting that contact from my address book and my e-mail looks normal again, hopefully permanantly.  I still have the flashing ads on the websites but it does not happen anymore on my e-mail at this point.  Give it a try.

[bgormley]

I've noticed the problem since June 8th and it is sending email regarding viagra and canadian drugs. Naturally Comcast does not seem to understand that the address book is on their server. Seems like everyone in my address book had mail sent to them, according to my sent mail account , but I'm not positive that anyone actually received anything.

It has happened four different times and I can't seem to get any good info from Comcast.

[CCCarole]

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bgormley wrote:

I've noticed the problem since June 8th and it is sending email regarding viagra and canadian drugs. Naturally Comcast does not seem to understand that the address book is on their server. Seems like everyone in my address book had mail sent to them, according to my sent mail account , but I'm not positive that anyone actually received anything.

It has happened four different times and I can't seem to get any good info from Comcast.

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Did you change your password yet?  If not, that is what you should do immediately.  A strong password consists of upper & lower case letters, numbers, and a character or two.  Also, do not use the same password on multiple sites.  If you use an email client as well as Smartzone/XfinityConnect, don't forget to change your password there too ( to match your new password)

CC

[bgormley]

The sent folder shows multiple mailings and addressed to only two or three persons at a time.

I have contacted Comcast twice in the last two days and the answers are generic, nothing to actually prohibit this. There are a lot of individuals here and it seems they ALL have the same complaint and seems like it is the same type of mailing going out.

[JR071702]

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bgormley wrote:

The sent folder shows multiple mailings and addressed to only two or three persons at a time.

I have contacted Comcast twice in the last two days and the answers are generic, nothing to actually prohibit this. There are a lot of individuals here and it seems they ALL have the same complaint and seems like it is the same type of mailing going out.

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If you follow the instructions that Carole gave you in answer to your first post, and change your password to a strong password, then you'll prevent the current problem from persisting and decrease the odds of it happening again.

JR

[mrhershey]

It might be drastic, but I removed all names from my address book/contact list.  That was the only way I could be sure that it wouldn't happen again. 

[gstager3]

This also Happened to me at 3AM late...how can I fix this???????

I changed the password, and it didn't help...What is going on???  HELP

[ceeotters]

OK, this just now happened to me.  Luckily most of the email contacts had a 3C put in front of them and they didn't go anywhere.  I just changed my password (which I've had for years, I'm sorry to say, and hated to change).  I sent an email to the people who I know got the message (I got it in my work address, which is how I knew it happened) and said to NOT click the link.  But what now?

[minnesota magg…]

This just happend to me this morning.  I have changed my password and called Comcast security.  Now what?

[mrhershey]

This also happened to me on Friday. This is second time this has happened. Last time (in March) it was my primary email account.  This time it was another email address that was secondary account.  Last time all of the emails were in sent box, but this time there is nothing there.  Also this time I don't have any contacts in address book for this account, and last time I took drastic action and removed all address book contacts.  I changed password and secret question, and don't know what else to do other than not using comcast email for anything.

[ceeotters]

Mine was only sent to my comcast contacts.  If you don't have any contacts in there, then who did the message get sent to?  Mine happened right after I approved a friend request in Facebook but I don't have contacts there.  I never go into the invites that say they're going to get my address book.  But Facebook does know my comcast address.  Nothing has happened since that time so hopefully it's a one-time thing. 

[mrhershey]

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ceeotters wrote:

Mine was only sent to my comcast contacts.  If you don't have any contacts in there, then who did the message get sent to?  Mine happened right after I approved a friend request in Facebook but I don't have contacts there.  I never go into the invites that say they're going to get my address book.  But Facebook does know my comcast address.  Nothing has happened since that time so hopefully it's a one-time thing. 

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I'm assuming the messages got sent to everyone whom I had sent emails to before, but I'm not really sure what happened.  It is weird that none of the messages were in my sent box.  I only found out because of all of the emails I had gotten about the undeliverable emails.  I called Comcast and they said that the sent mails were probably erased by whoever did it.

[madylarian]

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mrhershey wrote:

I'm assuming the messages got sent to everyone whom I had sent emails to before, but I'm not really sure what happened.  It is weird that none of the messages were in my sent box.  I only found out because of all of the emails I had gotten about the undeliverable emails.  I called Comcast and they said that the sent mails were probably erased by whoever did it.

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What you are describing is different.  In your case, what you've described is what happens when a spammer uses your address as the sender for a spam run.  That has happened to many of us at one time or another and there's nothing you can do about it but wait it out.  The spammers change the sender address constantly.

mady

[ceeotters]

But how do they get my contacts? That's what's unnerving.

[mrhershey]

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ceeotters wrote:

But how do they get my contacts? That's what's unnerving.

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That's what I want to know.

[minnesota magg…]

I too wish to know that.  I also checked the security log on my router, and it has been under constant attack since this spam incident.  The attackers are getting right through my Comcast cable modem and hitting the firewall on my router.  fortunately they have not breached the firewall.