Some Windows Live Hotmail customers may be seeing their e-mail accounts "hijacked" by spammers, who in turn are sending e-mails that may result in you downloading a worm or virus onto your computer. Windows Live Hotmail is the e-mail service that powers Office Live Small Business e-mail accounts.
These e-mails have surfaced in recent days. Once you've positively identified one of these virus e-mails, delete it. Do not open it, if at all possible, and do not click on any of the links.
A typical virus e-mail has an arcane subject line such as "Good shopping good mood," and a folksy e-mail encouraging you to visit an electronics company website and/or click on its e-mail address.
Clicking on these links downloads a copy of the worm onto the message recipients' computers. Upon download, it then gathers e-mail addresses of contacts saved on the recipient's computer and sends itself out to all of those addresses.
See this Security warning from Windows Live for more details.
Here are some tips for protecting your computer against these viruses:
- Stay up-to-date on the latest computer viruses going around. You can visit your antivirus company's website or call them to get more information.
- Be cautious about opening messages that contain links to websites.
- Be cautious when opening embedded links. Point your mouse cursor on the link and look at the underlying URL that displays in your browser status bar at the bottom and ensure that the URL makes sense for what the link states. Never login from one of these links. If a link directs you to login to a service that you use, instead go to that service by accessing the services website directly from your browser and not use the embedded link.
- Do not open attachments unless you are expecting them.
- Download the latest Microsoft updates frequently. To download the latest updates for Microsoft software, please visit the following links:
http://update.microsoft.com/windowsupdate/
http://office.microsoft.com/productupdates
Monte Enbysk