I just logged in to my gmail and was shocked by the amount of automatic responses I got in my inbox. I then looked at my sent messages folder and noticed that apparently, thousands of spam e-mails were sent using my gmail to all my contacts.
These people include trusted contacts such as university and work application managers aswell as other important people.
Now that the e-mails have already been sent, what can I do to control the damage done as much as possible? Should I send all those contacts another e-mail explaining the situation? Note that that would mean that another 5000+ e-mails are being sent from my account (which is probably already flagged as "spam"). If I don't clarify however, this will lead to awkward situations.
I checked the IP history and it also says that some IP has logged in to my account 45 minutes ago. I do not know this IP, so the mails must've been send at an other location with my password. I changed my password, but the mails have already been sent.
I am lost here and only see very bad outcomes of the situation, whatever I do. Should I maybe contact google? What do you recommend?
Best Answer
You did the right thing by changing your password. I'd also check that all the contact details (alternate e-mail addresses etc.) are still correct. Monitor the account closely and make sure that no one gets in again. The worst case is that you've got a keylogger installed so you might want to consider changing the password again from a different computer, and running a full scan of your machine.
As to the problem of all the e-mails sent - don't send out a mass e-mail, you'll only be compounding the problem and you might be marked as a spammer. It's important to note that most of the e-mails might not have been delivered if the various mail servers involved have decent, up to date spam and virus filters.
By all means contact the most important people individually - but it's sad to say that with all the spam going around and e-mail spoofing most people get spurious e-mails at some point.