Spam emails sent from my email that I never sent

[Super strokey]

My wife and I share an email account that recently sent an email to all of its contacts (on happened to be my wifes personal account) and it was total spam and my wife her self never sent it not did I.

I understand that it is very easy to spoof a from address but how did the email get a hold of her contacts? Virus?

[Kwirky]

Definitely a trojan, if not on your machine then on one of your contacts machines (if you ever did a mass email to everyone). Run a complete scan for viruses and then run MalwareByte Anti-Malware just to be safe.

[Super strokey]

The thing about it is that its a hotmail email and it hasnt been used in months atleast. Very strange.

Also its showing in the hotmail sent folder.

[gei]

Definitely a trojan, if not on your machine then on one of your contacts machines (if you ever did a mass email to everyone). Run a complete scan for viruses and then run MalwareByte Anti-Malware just to be safe.

It's not "definitely" a trojan.... your wife may have also visited a phishing site and given away her hotmail password...

[Super strokey]

It's not "definitely" a trojan.... your wife may have also visited a phishing site and given away her hotmail password...

I suppose but she hasnt used this email since the wedding and that was in 2007.

[Driver8]

Intelligent criminals (a misnomer of sorts) will often steal information, then wait several months (or even years) before they use it. This makes it significantly more difficult to catch them!

[Mark099]

The thing about it is that its a hotmail email and it hasnt been used in months atleast. Very strange.

Also its showing in the hotmail sent folder.

Your hotmail account has been hacked. It happened to me several months ago. I just changed my hotmail password and the problem went away.