Help! Yahoo email virus with (No Subject) as the title.

[philtan]

Hi all, I am a Mac newbie and recently infected by a contact by just previewing an email that has (No Subject) in the title bar.

After which the virus spam my yahoo contacts and send a copy of the same email to everyone on my contacts.

I would need the community advice on:

1) Will this email affect my Mac? Do I need to download an anti-virus program and do a scan? If yes, which anti-virus program is recommended?

2) How to deal with the virus on yahoo email? I hope not to go the extreme of creating another new email account. But I have just changed my password and disable all preview option.

Your kind advice is much appreciated. Thank you.

 

[GGJstudios]

Hi all, I am a Mac newbie and recently infected by a contact by just previewing an email that has (No Subject) in the title bar.

After which the virus spam my yahoo contacts and send a copy of the same email to everyone on my contacts.

I would need the community advice on:

1) Will this email affect my Mac? Do I need to download an anti-virus program and do a scan? If yes, which anti-virus program is recommended?

2) How to deal with the virus on yahoo email? I hope not to go the extreme of creating another new email account. But I have just changed my password and disable all preview option.

Your kind advice is much appreciated. Thank you.

Your Mac is not infected and cannot be infected simply by previewing an email, even if it has malware attached. Windows viruses cannot run on Mac OS X. No viruses exist in the wild that can run on Mac OS X, and there never have been any, since it was released 10 years ago. The handful of trojans that exist can be easily avoided with some basic education, common sense and care in what software you install. Also, Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Lion have anti-malware protection built in, further reducing the need for 3rd party antivirus apps.

Mac Virus/Malware Info​

Someone apparently hacked your yahoo account and used it to spam. That likely has nothing to do with viruses, malware or even your computer. Yahoo mail accounts get hacked all the time. Change your password to something complex, using upper and lower case letters, numbers and special characters.

 

[philtan]

Your Mac is not infected and cannot be infected simply by previewing an email, even if it has malware attached. Windows viruses cannot run on Mac OS X. No viruses exist in the wild that can run on Mac OS X, and there never have been any, since it was released 10 years ago. The handful of trojans that exist can be easily avoided with some basic education, common sense and care in what software you install. Also, Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Lion have anti-malware protection built in, further reducing the need for 3rd party antivirus apps.

Mac Virus/Malware Info​

Someone apparently hacked your yahoo account and used it to spam. That likely has nothing to do with viruses, malware or even your computer. Yahoo mail accounts get hacked all the time. Change your password to something complex, using upper and lower case letters, numbers and special characters.

Thanks so much GGJstudios

 

[blevins321]

Good advice above I'd make one additional suggestion. Gmail has much better phishing/scam detection than Yahoo does. You might give that a try. It'll alert you when it detects a malicious link in the message.

 

[SvP]

even better password:
a few random words:
"weatherwallpapercoffeebeanmachine"
harder to hack and easier to remember than "%67ys7*"

 

[GGJstudios]

even better password:
a few random words:
"weatherwallpapercoffeebeanmachine"

Even better would be "w3ath3r?wa11PaP3Rc0ff33!b3an-mach1n3"
or simply "c0Ff3e~b3Anz!"

 

[rowley]

any two phonetic together works, or even from two languages, like

castelltowers

or

fromagebeetles

it's even harder for dictionary attacks to pick that up.