Windows live alerts and new virus?

16 years ago

Just this afternoon, we have suddenly gotten notices in Hotmail, as if from Windows live alerts, telling us that certain friends' (named--and they really are our friends) birthdays are coming up on Jan. 1. We happen to know that (1) their birthdays are NOT on that date, and (2) that the messages cannot possibly be from said friends, as they are Jehovah's Witnesses, and JWs do not celebrate birthdays.

My husband opened one of these messages and now we are wondering if all the people in our address book are now receiving a similar message about us. That would be annoying, but just a prank. Does it have a more sinister design, like getting us to install a key-logger?

WinXP SP3

Dell dimension

TrendMicro Internet Security

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Comments (7)

mikie_gw
16 years ago
Might want to visit your myAlerts page and un-subscribe to msn calendar.

As far as dates being wrong, I, as well as many people, will use wrong dates for birthdays, for personal security reasons.

Here is a link that might be useful: http://alerts.live.com/Alerts/MyAlerts.aspx
zep516
16 years ago
The only way anything from an E-Mail could get installed on the hard drive is if you double click an attachment and set a file or files in motion.
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mikie_gw
16 years ago
btw... my birthday more often than not is Jan 1st... thats the first date you see on the drop down lists. Simple.
ravencajun Zone 8b TX
16 years ago
I am currently searching for info on why this happened also. It happened to my hotmail account also, I was on my linux machine and did not open any of them just hilighted all and deleted them, it appears something went haywire in live alerts but so far am not finding much info.
I am running malwarebytes on my windows machines just in case.
ravencajun Zone 8b TX
16 years ago
for those that it did not happen to here is what happened, I had my hotmail opened in firefox as usual, suddenly it refreshed as it does to get new mail, when it refreshed the first 2 full pages of the inbox were completely filled with windows live alerts with the names of people in my address book or my msn messenger ( not sure which since I have some in both) each entry had that it was their birthday and the birthday was listed as January 1st.

I did not open any of the entries, I was on my linux box, I hilighted all of them on page one and deleted them then did the same on page 2.After clearing those I went to my windows live calendar to see if anything there was messed up but it was exactly as it should be.

very strange occurrence and hearing it happening to many people is quite strange
If anyone spots reports of this or info about why it happened please post and give links or info. I am checking the security forums and not seeing anything much.
biwako_of_abi
Original Author
16 years ago
I appreciate the answers, and your link to live alerts, Mikie. I have now turned it off.

For what it's worth, in our case, we did not get alerts for all the many people in our address book, only for 4 of them, and we have no birthdays listed for anyone anywhere in our computers. We are speculating that the messages came to us because someone was messing with THEIR address books.
We have not received these messages at any of our other email addresses, including Lycos, Cox, Juno, and Netzero.
ravencajun Zone 8b TX
16 years ago
no this was definitely something that happened through windows live alerts, how many people do you have listed as msn messenger addresses? because I think from the names I remember from briefly looking at them that they were all people that are in my msn messenger list, if it had been all in my address book it would have been many more than the 2 pages worth. I do not think it was because someone you know was messing with their address book I suspect this was system wide to all hotmail live users. I am sure there will be some news hitting about it. All my scans are clean which is what I expected.
Someone apparently hit something somewhere at windows live alerts that triggered it.

Windows live alerts and new virus?

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Windows live alerts and new virus?

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mikie_gw

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