how easy is it for someone to get into someone elses email address?

Question

deeply concerned....a friend of ours....i think he may have had his email hijacked.......a web link was sent via his address to mine but nothing more wrote on it......it was not something he would send. his email address is really simple , just his name,,,as he is very old.....i have warned him. does someone have to be on the same network to hack into his account? do you think his account has been hacked into?

Answer 1

he should download, install, update and then do a full system scan with this:



Malwarebytes

http://www.malwarebytes.org/



often trojans or other viruses/malware will hijack your email address on your own computer and use it to send out spam.



do a full system scan, delete what is found, then do a full system scan with a virus scanner (which has been updated) and delete what it finds.



if he has no virus scanner there are a lot of free ones



Avast Free

http://download.cnet.com/Avast-Free-Antivirus/3000-2239_4-10019223.html?tag=mncol;1



once he has deleted everything that is found he should change his password.



if he has a Hotmail account, he better make a copy of all his contacts and forward any emails he needs to keep to a new email address (not with hotmail) as hotmail close or lock accounts that send out spam and they are very hard to get back.

Answer 2

Hacking is not and easy process. The only way that somebody's email address could be compromised, is if someone knows their password, knows enough about them to guess their security questions, a keylogger is on the computer, or if someone phished is the account. A key logger is not likely, unless someone else was using his computer, or he downloaded a virus. Phising is not likely unless he was tricked into going to a fake login page, and entering his information.



First Choice Computer Services

Answer 3

Just have him change his password, It would only get hacked if someone really wanted his specific email and knew what they were doing, or he accidentally typed in his information on a malicious website.

Answer 4

that is the finest way the despatched digital mail looks now considering that the advance on the classic mail. It maintains to be bold interior the inbox. also the inbox mail exhibits the time the clean mail were given right here in, in spite of the indisputable fact that even as you open it, it has the date and the time. in case you go away it sit down interior the inbox till eventually day after as we talk, then it exhibits the date it arrived, not the time. So no human being is interpreting your despatched digital mail.