Yahoo Account was hacked

First off I would like to state that with my question I don't want to know how to hack.
Yesterday when no one who knows our account information was around a computer our Yahoo account was hacked. 15 Minutes later I came home tried to check emails and got the following message..
Temporary problem accessing your mailbox it then proceeded to tell me to 'refresh' or resign back into my account. I tried that and it told me user name &/or password was incorrect. I left Firefox and tried on IE still got the same msg. I did the Forgot name/password and answered all the questions and got a new password and got my account back.
Got into my inbox and saw 2 emails from yahoo telling me account password had been changed the first was time stamped for 3:29pm EST which I was not home at the time and the IP# at the bottom of that was for some telecommunications place in the Caribbean. The 2nd email was mine from when I got my account back.
What I would like to know is how is it possible for someone to be able to gain access to the account and change the password without knowing the answers to my security questions??

Is my computer really safe??? We use AVG for antivirus and ZoneAlarm Free for Firewall.. I noticed in my Firewall just now that in my Trusted Zone I have something called an Loopback Adapter I dont' recall putting it there and I don't know if it was there before my Yahoo account was hacked yesterday or not.
How do I tell if this was put there by whoever hacked into my Yahoo account yesterday??

Thanks,
sw

 

Well, if you're concerned about keyloggers on your machine, I would recommend that you visit the Malware Removal thread, and follow the steps there.

However, I can't imagine a yahoo email account being a big target for a professional hacker. I would first suspect a friend or family member trying to pull a prank. If they were saavy enough to use a proxy, they could appear to be using an IP in the carribean. Clean your system as described above, and change your password and security questions, and you should be safe. It also can't hurt to delete offline content. I would use CCleaner, or for Firefox go into tools --> options, and on the privacy tab, you can press the buttons to clear history, and password caches, etc. Same in IE... tools --> options click the 'delete offline files' button.

 

I know it isn't anyone in my family no one is that computer literate in my family. I know that others have experienced this problem with yahoo as well where they are unable to access their account due to it being hacked some it has taken them a couple months of going round and round with Yahoo to be able to get it back.
I am just wondering how my password can be changed without someone knowing my security questions.

I am in the process of doing the Malware scans just to be safe. Plus I am very umm 'anal' about spyware so I am constantly running CCleaner, Adware, Spybot S&D to name a few on my computers. Monthly I try to do the Read Me First to make sure I am in good shape. Plus I also make sure my AV & FW are up to date and that my Microsoft Download updates are current.

Like I said before I was just wondering how someone could change my password on Yahoo without knowing the answers tomy questions??

As for the Loopback Adaptor I really don't know if I added that to my trusted zone or not.. what is a Loopback Adaptor anyhow and would it be safe for me to remove it from my trusted zone in ZoneAlarm?


Thanks for the post..
sw

 

They could only change the password, not knowing the security questions, if they knew the existing password. Either this has slipped to someone you know, or someone has got it with some form of spyware, I would imagine. (Assuming Yahoo isn't simply having technical difficulties - you could also review their account policies)

And loopback adapter is a way for your machine to reference its own network card. For example, if you were to ping 127.0.0.1 (aka the loopback address) you would be pinging your own network card. I wouldn't play with its settings.

 

Slightly hijacking this thread, I notice I have 2 occurrences of PPP Adapter in the trusted zone as well as Loopback Adapter. I'd like to know what PPP Adapter does and does a single user PC need it. Bazza