You should be fine. Were you hacked or spoofed?

I'm pretty sure I was hacked.

what's spoofed?

how can you tell you were hacked?

My account was sending out emails to my contacts. One of them texted me they received a strange email from me. Also a very smart former classmate emailed me I had been hacked because he too received that email. I was getting failed email attempts in my account. All that is enough proof for me.

Contact your email server and let them know of suspicious activity. They will look to see how much email is going out of your account (and have automatic checks). I believe they can halt your account from sending until you figure out what you want to do.

Have you scanned your system for malware? If they got that password it's likely they got other accounts. I'd go to a known clean computer or smartphone and change all passwords. I'd also get new credit cards issued.

Bleeping Computer will do an in-depth, multi-layered check of your system to see if malware is the problem or you could just back up and reformat to make sure anything hiding is cleaned off (some can hide from AV software). Then change all passwords again.

Jkayd- that could easily be a spoof, rather than a hack. If the people sending out the "fake" emails simply used your email address as the "from" address (this is a VERY common thing), it would appear to be from you, and you would also receive the bounce notices.

However, since you've changed your password - even if you were hacked - you will be fine.

Why would anyone want to spoof me? Just playing with my head?

What you're describing suggests a simple spoof using your email address, which can be learned a zillion different ways. That's why it's a good idea to have "extra" email addresses you use ONLY for various websites and all non-important purposes. So that your main/regular email address isn't cluttered or disturbed by these kind of things.

My email for this website includes my former user name SnidelyWhiplash. I don't need to tell you, that's not my name.

Spoofed emails usually contain links they want the recipients to click on, for various different reasons. That's their reason for being.

Same thing happened to me last month. When I opened my email, my inbox was flooded with 140 emails that said "undeliverable". None of them were to anyone from my contacts. I did get a few not so nice responses. The email that was sent out with my address as the sender, said it was from the Bank of America fraud department and the accounts were going to be suspended. Tons of misspellings in that letter. Regardless, I was freaked out, but contacted my service provider's fraud department. It did not originate from my email, likely a spoof. I changed all passwords as I normally do every few months.