Hotmail Virus

Hotmail Virus: What is it?

Often times people can infect their computer with a virus or malware by downloading unsafe attachments and opening them on their computer.

These malicious little buggers sometimes come in emails. Someone who is infected sends you an email, you open it up and then you are infected too.

If you notice that your hotmail account is spamming your contacts (or even more than the people one your contact list) then chances are you either have a virus or your account has been compromised.

You may also notice that you receive A LOT of delivery failure notices.

Hotmail Virus: What can I do about it?

Secure your account:

The trick here is to attack the problem at all angles. We definitely want to ensure that your computer is 100% malicious code free and that your Hotmail account is also safe. Concerning your account you have two options:

1. Change your account password to some nonsense and abandon it (Safest but least convenient). Then create a fresh account.

2. Change your password to a secure one (Eight or more characters including letters, punctuation, symbols, and numbers. Change your password every 6 months or so and make sure your new password is not closely related to your old one). Also change your security questions to something new.

You can check out more password tips at:
http://www.microsoft.com/security/online-privacy/passwords-create.aspx

Secure your computer

Protecting your computer is a must. There are many great programs out there to help you protect your computer for free or for very little cost. I typically use a combination of Malwarebytes, Avast! Antivirus, Zonealarm, and CCleaner to keep my pc healthy.

To do a good thorough scan of your computer takes time and it is best to do it in safe mode without network prompt.

1. Download, install, and update your virus and malware with the latest definitions.
2. Restart the computer into safe mode (without network prompt) by pressing F8 (a lot).
3. Run the scans

Avast: Click on the SCAN COMPUTER tab. I would recommend doing a full scan and leaving the computer overnight.

Malwarebytes offers the same options: Quick Scan and Full Scan. Again if you have the time I would recommend the Full Scan (after the anti virus scan). It has helped me remove things the quick scan couldn’t find in the past.

Both programs create logs of their scans. These can be useful to help troubleshoot the problem if scanning didn’t help. You can find the the Malwarebytes log in the file location listed in the Logs tab of the interface. You can see the scan logs of Avast! under the SCAN COMPUTER tab. It is the third option.

Hotmail Virus: Clean up after yourself. 

I also like to use CCLEANER to clean out the caches and temp files. You never know what kind of garbage can get stashed there.