Help! A friend's Mac is sending out junk emails

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Trouble is I'm a PC man and Macs ain't my thing, so help would be most appreciated!

My friend's got a newish Mac (maybe a year or so old) - big trendy white screen thing with an awkward square buttony type keyboard...

The problem: junk emails are emanating from his Yahoo! email account to people in his address book. I don't know what or how the Yahoo! email account is accessed - I'd have guessed via a browser of some type, but all I understand is that he "clicks an icon"... I don't think it's the standard mail program (Mac Mail?) as I did manage to set that up for another standard POP3 / SMTP email account about a year ago (after a lot of unnecessary pain, unfortunately).

And, just to make it that bit more difficult, I'm nowhere near the machine either, so can't see it, except as some fuzzy image in my mind.

Standard PC-style solution would be based around getting some anti-virus software installed, and by default I would choose Norton Anti-Virus. I can see that a Mac version can be purchased and downloaded.

If anyone could point me in the right direction, that would help me to help him - and he'd be very grateful.

Cheers,

Taliska

----

Also - is there any 'remote control software' that would work suitably from my PC to his Mac that anyone could recommend.
 
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If it is coming from a Yahoo! e-mail account, it sounds like your friend's account has been hacked, which has nothing to do with a virus (no viri in the wild for a Mac...the Mac AV programs only scan for Windows viri that cant affect the Mac anyway), and nothing to do with it being a Mac. Your friend needs to change their password on the Yahoo! mail account to something secure, and also make sure that it is not set to keep him/her logged in for 2 weeks or whatever the default is on Yahoo!.
 
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Taliska
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If it is coming from a Yahoo! e-mail account, it sounds like your friend's account has been hacked, which has nothing to do with a virus (no viri in the wild for a Mac...the Mac AV programs only scan for Windows viri that cant affect the Mac anyway), and nothing to do with it being a Mac. Your friend needs to change their password on the Yahoo! mail account to something secure, and also make sure that it is not set to keep him/her logged in for 2 weeks or whatever the default is on Yahoo!.

Funny you should say that, but I was just looking at the email headers and the junk emails appear to be coming from an ISP in Poland, whereas his written emails appear to be coming from his ISP in the UK. Had suggested earlier that his Yahoo! Mail account password be changed - will reiterate, strongly!

Thanks for your assistance! It's so tricky solving problems on a platform that one's not used to, although it wasn't a platform-specific problem in this instance. Needless to say, I don't use, nor intend to use Yahoo! Mail, so am not familiar with its implementation.

Just so I know: is Yahoo! Mail accessed by a Yahoo! Mail application, or by a browser? And the 'standard' Mac browser is?

Cheers,

Taliska
 
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It could be accessed either way, but 99% of people access via the web. The "standard" browser is Safari, but some use Chrome or Firefox.

It is certainly not a virus or malware, or anything else on their Mac. This person must have had their online Yahoo account hacked either through phishing or they had a really weak password.

It had nothing to do with their Mac.
 
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Taliska
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Cheers!

Just in case this one slipped through...

Is there any 'remote control software' that would work suitably from my PC to his Mac that anyone could recommend.

RDP / VNC etc

Taliska
 
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I've used VNC in the past, but it's been a long time. It worked fine though.
 

cwa107


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I'd recommend LogMeIn.com, which has a free service that will allow you to co-opt his machine at will. It works equally well with Windows and it doesn't open the gaping hole that VNC would need.
 
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Taliska
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I'd recommend LogMeIn.com, which has a free service that will allow you to co-opt his machine at will. It works equally well with Windows and it doesn't open the gaping hole that VNC would need.

Cheers - sounds a better option.

Taliska
 

cwa107


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Cheers - sounds a better option.

Taliska

Yeah, I like it quite a bit. My dad is a "seasoned citizen" and computers aren't exactly his forte. He bought an iMac a couple of years ago and I use it occasionally to help him out. It works quite well, albeit slowly since his DSL connection is pretty lacking.
 
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Taliska
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Yeah, I like it quite a bit. My dad is a "seasoned citizen" and computers aren't exactly his forte. He bought an iMac a couple of years ago and I use it occasionally to help him out. It works quite well, albeit slowly since his DSL connection is pretty lacking.

Frighteningly simliar circumstances here! :)

Taliska
 

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