Spam emails from friend with Ipad

[MarylinC]

I’ve noticed an upsurge recently of spam emails, supposedly from friends, that contains dodgy links and some are from my sister. I’ve spoken to her but she tells me she has an ipad and an iphone neither of which have found any problems. She does also have a win7 PC but she rarely uses it and only turns it on about once a month. One of the dodgy emails arrived this morning and that Win7 machine wasn’t switched on so I can’t imagine that being the problem.

I’ve used Windows PC’s for over 25 years but in all that time I’ve never used an Apple device of any kind so I’m a bit out of my depth as how to advise her.

As for me, I am running a fully updated copy of Win10 and also have Bitdefender Internet Security and Malwarebytes Premium running alongside each other and also are both fully updated. I’m also net savvy enough after 25 years to know what not to do online and noone has ever reported receiving similar emails from me so I’m very confident there’s no infection at my end.

The emails from my sister are only spoofing the first part of her email address.

What I’ve read online suggests Apple devices can’t get infected unless they’ve been jailbroken but I don’t even know what that means. My sister isn’t that tech savvy so I cannot imagine she would ever make those kind of changes.

So, if they are so safe, how come i’m getting emails like this from her and what can she do to try to track down the problem?

[Rustys]

Have her change the password to her email account and also look in the send and deleted folder of the web based version.

See if that helps at all and let us know if that help or if the information on https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/for...end-with-ipad/

[MarylinC]

Thanks I’ll tell her to try that in case they’ve hacked her email account. If not then the only other thing I can think is that she has an infection on one of her devices.

Since both of the ones she uses regularly are both Apple then how does she track it down if her apple security isn’t picking it up?

[Rustys]

Since both of the ones she uses regularly are both Apple then how does she track it down if her apple security isn’t picking it up?

That is something that you will have to discuss with out security section and it wold be best if the created an account so they could talk to them directly.

[Bruce]

very unlikely any PC or Mac device is infected.
sounds like the email is hacked or more likely, and simply, her email address is on one or more of those spammer lists and they are just using hers and others email address to send out their junk.
if you get an email from elvis@nasa.com you’re going to right away skip it as junk, but an email from your sister will make you open it and they either get their clickbait ad shown and revenue from it or deliver the malware payload the email had embedded.

all you can do is scan your devices for crap AND change your email password.

[veeg]

Any updates?