email hacking?

[Hippoharbor]

I received an email from an old friend the other day and when I clicked to open message, it was spam. I assumed that someone had hacked into his email and was sending messages to his list of contacts.

However, I just received another email this morning from another person from my contacts list with title "my email account has been hacked". I did not open this message b/c now I am suspicious that someone actually hacked into my own email and is sending me emails with names from my contact list.

What do I do? If you click on email message, could that put viruses on my computer, or do you have to actually click on the 'attachment' in that email to get infected?

I am now really worried b/c I do not even know how to work my virus-protection programs.
What do I do???

Thanks,
Michelle

[infomama]

To the best of my knowledge attachments are where the viruses are and they do not open automatically but to be on the safe side I would just delete the email all together. Perhaps I may give them a ring to see whats up.

[vonfirmath]

To the best of my knowledge attachments are where the viruses are and they do not open automatically but to be on the safe side I would just delete the email all together. Perhaps I may give them a ring to see whats up.

Depends on the settings on your email. If you have Microsoft Outlook and have the reading pane on and have it set to automatically show certain things, then just clicking on the email causes the message to show in the reading pane and could potentially cause malicious code to run.