I don't know what the correct term is for the following issue, but it's when your entire email account gets infected by some malicious program that starts sending garbage emails to everyone in your address book. For example, if your name is Joe Jones, the subject line typically reads "from Joe Jones" as it arrives in the mailboxes of your Contacts, and God knows what it contains (as I never open those since I recognize it right away, but probably contains some malicious URL link).
I was once told by someone that I believed to have a lot of tech knowledge, is that those infections in the email account, are triggered when you open an infected or suspicious email or attachment from someone else. But I am having this infection happening to email accounts, to which, that theory is completely impossible, so I am desperately trying to figure out what causes it.
So, I've got this email account that I only use to send text emails (no attachments) only to myself. It's just a way of documenting information I will need in the future, and just using that email account for storage and organization of information. This particular email account - I never receive emails from anyone whatsoever, so of course I never open attachments. I only use it to send emails to myself (reminders, research, etc). I also happened to have my own alternate email addresses, listed in the address book, but no-one elses.
But despite all of the above, I still frequently find myself getting those infected spam emails from this "inactive" account, that spam everyone in your address book - which in this case, is my own other alternate emails. How is this even possible ?
Here is something even weirder. I've got another similar email account that I ONLY use for myself, that I have not even logged into, within months and months. Yet suddenly, out of nowhere, I find out that email account, is suddenly taken over by the infection and spamming all my other emails. What could possibly trigger that, if I have not even logged into it, within months ?
If such innocent activity, or lack of activity, can trigger those things, I wonder how easy it is for it to happen in the email accounts I actually use, and have those infected spams sent out to people I actually know. Some people don't recognize it as spam, as it somehow appears harmless to them, and they assume it's really me, and they then open it, so that concerns me.
I can't think of anything that I'm doing that is triggering this issue. So what exactly is the culprit and how can I stop it, even though there's virtually no activity on some of my accounts to realistically cause it ?