The answer, unfortunately is yes - I have seen things like this before. It is not necessarily the hacker's impersonating your friends. What is most likely to be happening (especially because your friend was offline) is that they were infected with some kind of virus - These kinds of viruses send messages to all the people on the infected's contact list. People then click on the link (or download a file), get infected and without even knowing, start to send links and files to everyone on their contact lists - You can see how these things spread so quickly
Anyway - to stop further infections I recommend you follow these steps:
1. Secure your Instant Messengers
For MSN Messenger (or now know as Windows Live Messenger):
-First go to tools - options - file transfer - check "Automatically reject file transfers for known unsafe file types", un-check "automatically share backgrounds and accept shared backgrounds"
(you could also disable links)
For other messengers look for equivalent options!
General:
-Save all downloaded files to a certain folder, and if possible configure your anti-virus to scan that folder
-And if you are slightly paranoid you can also download something like '
sandboxie' to further isolate downloaded files
2. Common Sense! <----Most Important
Your best defence against getting infected is to always ask: 'Where did you get that file from?' and simple questions like that. I rather ask a couple of questions (and look slightly paranoid!
) than be infected with malware and have to spend loads of time trying to get rid of it!
Also, if you get a file request saying...
...and the file extension is something other than a picture file - you know you should decline the request (zip files are used a lot by baddies because they can hide things in them - To see whats inside you have to open them
...by then it is too late!)
Hope that helps,
honda
P.S. Remember - Use Your Common Sense! 
Originally Posted by honda12
The answer, unfortunately is yes - I have seen things like this before. It is not necessarily the hacker's impersonating your friends. What is most likely to be happening (especially because your friend was offline) is that they were infected with some kind of virus - These kinds of viruses send messages to all the people on the infected's contact list. People then click on the link (or download a file), get infected and without even knowing, start to send links and files to everyone on their contact lists - You can see how these things spread so quickly
Reply With Quote