Address Book Question

[gravey92]

Yesterday I downloaded a few files. I uploaded them to my dropbox and a friend downloaded them from there. This morning i get a text telling me that one of the files must have a virus in it because her email sent out a bunch of spam to basically everyone who had sent her an email in the past or in her contact book. I thought it must have been something she did because I've never had any problems with torrents and we both have macbook airs. Then i check my email and the same thing has happened to me. I did a little looking around about mac email viruses but just found posts telling others to change their email passwords. I know mac viruses are extremely rare but I find it bizarre that both of our yahoo email accounts were hacked at the same time and sent out that many emails. I'm wondering if anyone has any clue what happened here.

Thanks

 

[ScoobyMcDoo]

I can say with 99% confidence that it has nothing to do with the files that you have in your drop box. For whatever reason, yahoo mail accounts seem to be the target of hacker/spammers or whatever you want to call these slime bags. Mine got hacked a while back, several of my friends and family have also had this happen.

Anyway, just change your yahoo email password to something hard to guess and you should be fine.

 

[gravey92]

I did some reading and saw Yahoo was having more trouble with accounts being hacked earlier this year with basically the same symptoms. The only reason I can think of for why ours were hacked at the same time is because we both got the emails right around the same day.

 

[GGJstudios]

I know mac viruses are extremely rare...

Mac OS X viruses are not rare; they're non-existent. There has never been an OS X virus in the wild, and only a handful of trojans, which can easily be avoided by practicing safe computing. If you are downloading and installing pirated software, be aware there is a high risk of infection by trojans. Read the What security steps should I take? section of the Mac Virus/Malware FAQ for tips on practicing safe computing.

Email accounts are hacked all the time, especially on domains such as hotmail and yahoo. It can happen, no matter what computer you own, or even if you don't own a computer. Change your email passwords and make them long and complex, using special characters, numbers and upper and lower case letters.

Also remember that it's possible to download a file that contains Windows malware, then send that file to a Windows user. While your Mac will not be affected by such malware, that doesn't prevent the Windows user from being affected. Make sure any Windows user you send files to has antivirus software running.