I need to know what happened to my account.  Early this morning I checked my email account and found out that I had over 50 returned emails in my account from a message I didn't send.  I first thought someone was spoofing my email address until I looked at the email address of the intended recepients and they were all from my hotmail address book.  Now I don't use any kind of external email client like outlook express or outlook to check my hotmail account.  So what I'm wondering is how did these messages get sent from my account?  The thing is none of the sent messages were in my sent message folder?!?  I have scanned my system for virus's etc... but nothing has come up.  Either my password was stolen somehow, which I doubt as I'm very careful (MCSE & MCSA Certified) or their is a new worm that can send mail from within hotmail?  Any information you can give me would be greatly appreciated.  I have already changed the password for the account and updated the other security information just to be sure as well as made sure my signature was empty which it was but I still need this looked in to because as careful as I am I am greatly surprised that something like this could happen to me of all people and I don't want it happening again.

The contents of the message that were sent out were:

Dear friend:

       how are you doing recently ? I would like to introduce you a very good company which i knew.They can offer you all kinds of electronical products which you need, such as motorcycles, laptops, mobile phones, digial cameras, TV LCD, xbox, ps3, gps, MP3/4, etc. Please take some time to have a look at it,there must be something you'd like to purchase.
Their website:      sell-good.com

Their Email:         {removed email address}


Hope you have a good mood in shopping from their company!

I’ve moved your post here in the Non Hotmail Questions forum.

We’ve been receiving similar reports and I assure you that we’re currently investigating this. To prevent this from happening again, please change your password regularly. In addition, please report this to the Windows Live Hotmail Customer Support Team/abuse team by sending an e-mail message to their abuse@hotmail.com address.

Thanks!

How is my question a "Non Hotmail" question?  That doesn't make sense because my question is directly about Hotmail.  Based on what I have read online I believe someone has found a way to hack the Hotmail servers allowing them access to email accounts.  Why do I believe this, great question, thanks for asking.  I believe this because I use a seperate, distinct, unique password only for hotmail that is 10 characters long which consists of upper & lower case letters, numbers and symbols.  Because this password is not used anywhere else it's impossible for it to have been stolen because I do not use any kind of external email client, I don't visit any suspicious sites (even if I did the password I use for hotmail isn't used with any other kind of account) I also don't have any virus's or spyware and my updates are all up to date.  I have already emailed WLHCST.

@ mkoontz

I appreciate your concern, however, the WLHCST are the ones dedicated in investigating this issue thus we referred you to them. 

I just had the same thing happen to me today.  Do we have an answer on how to solve this?

@ amjeananda 

Please provide us your complete e-mail address so we can see what we can with your account.

Thanks!

i just tried sending an email and the virus or spam whatever it is has infected my automatic signature.  So this appears at the bottom of all my emails:

Also I don't want to give my email address over this blog...

@ amjeananda

We need to check on your account.  Dont worry, once you post your account in this forum, they are automatically removed from your post so other users wont be able to see it.  It is only visible to us, moderators.

Thanks!

{removed email address}

To help you, I must request additional detailed information about your question. Please reply to this post with an exact description of what you want to do with Hotmail and what you expect to be the result. If you can, use the feature names that appear in Hotmail to help guide me to an answer to your request.

I have had the same issue with this company that other people on this forum have had. I have deleted the spam message from my signature and it seems to have solved the problem. I have sent an email to {removed email address} about this issue. I think that this company should be investigated for this. My email seems to be working okay right now. Thanks.

ranger11:

I have had the same issue with this company that other people on this forum have had. I have deleted the spam message from my signature and it seems to have solved the problem. I have sent an email to abuse@hotmail.com about this issue. I think that this company should be investigated for this. My email seems to be working okay right now. Thanks.

Thanks for the clarification. We've determined that a certain malware is causing this issue.The product team is currently investigating the source of the malware and we'll keep you updated on this. In the meantime, please visit our solution blog for more info on how to enhance the protection of your account:

http://windowslivehelp.com/solutions/safety/archive/2008/10/24/protecting-your-identity-you-can-t-afford-to-take-the-back-seat.aspx

Sorry it took me so long.  Here is my email address:  {removed email address} 

My email has been working fine ever since I deleted all of the emails.  I have changed my password, but would still like the reassurance that my email is save.

Thanks for you help!

@ amjeananda

Hi, thanks for this info. Your account seems to be working properly on our end as well.

As what was previously mentioned by Sharon S, a malware had caused this incident. Check out the link that she provided above on how you can secure your account. Also, make sure that you’ve created a strong password, and that you’ve updated your secret question and answer and alternate e-mail address. For info on how you can do these, check out this link:

http://windowslivehelp.com/solutions/accounts/archive/2008/10/25/what-to-do-if-you-think-your-accounts-been-stolen.aspx

You can also check out this link for any malware removal:

http://www.microsoft.com/security/malwareremove/default.mspx

I have had the same problem for a few weeks now and every couple of days I get my mailbox full of supposedly returned emails from the same or similar electronics company.  How has this happened and how can I get rid of this?  I have tried sending them all to the phising scam box, but that hasn't helped.  It is driving me MAD!!!!