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mattg3

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Dec 8, 2010
411
9
ma.
Put my 2010 mac in sleep mode and went to work.Came home to find my computer out of sleep mode and emails from my contacts saying they have been getting spam in my name.Found a pile of undelivered notifications in my hotmail inbox.I changed my password in the hope that is the end of this.I thought mac could not get malware or virus.Im new to mac world so can anyone explain what is going on here? Thanks Matt
 

Bear

macrumors G3
Jul 23, 2002
8,088
5
Sol III - Terra
It is possible to forge the sender on emails, so they messages you're getting notifications for may not even have been sent from your system or hotmail account.

And it's possible they could have cracked your hotmail password or they could have stolen the password in some other way than having a virus on your system.. Remember to use different passwords for each site you go to. Especially don't use your email password when registering for websites.
 

Paulywauly

macrumors 6502a
Sep 26, 2009
766
0
Durham, UK
Its not impossible to get a virus on a Mac, but unless you count that recent Mac Defender scare its so unlikely its not even worth thinking about.

It defo sounds like your Hotmail accounts being hacked. Change your password to something with capital letters and numbers in, the more complex it is the less likely it is you'll be hacked in the future.
 

GGJstudios

macrumors Westmere
May 16, 2008
44,545
943
I thought mac could not get malware or virus.
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:
As others have said, this was only a case of your email account being hacked or spoofed, and completely unrelated to your computer.
 

ZMacintosh

macrumors 65816
Nov 13, 2008
1,445
684
No malware/virus' were probably installed as virus' like mentioned before do not exist for the .

But I will say this, ditch the damn hotmail account. go with GMail. Way more secure. dont bother with Yahoo or another hotmail account those are always farmed and spammed religiously.
 
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