it could be an infection on your machine compromised your password and relayed it back to whoever is the ghost mailer
You may not even be aware you had been infected
It takes seconds to reveal stored email passwords with a legit tool such as Nirsoft's MailPassView
The hackers have it down to a fine art - run a script on a website, relay the password back, then delete the infection leaving no trace.
Obviously we don't know exactly what got you - but something did and there are lots around
it could have been a website running a script
a script in an e-mail
if the firewall isn't working it could even be a breach through an open port
Many, many ways
Do you use your email password for other sites e.g. Facebook / Youtube / banking......
Last edited by Milo Minderbinder; 15th May 2012 at 15:34.