Since yesterday, avast picks up emails from obvious spam type senders. The Avast message is that there are too many identical emails at the same time. I cannot delete, but only have the option of “dont send”. This happens even though my email provider (gmail) is not activated, when I have not opened the browser, just the ADSL connection is on. Is this a hacker attack? How can I stop this?
You appear to have either a hidden or undetected SpamBot on your system trying to send email which is being blocked by avast.
If you haven’t already got this software (freeware), download, install, update and run it and report the findings (it should product a log file).
MalwareBytes Anti-Malware, On-Demand only in free version http://download.bleepingcomputer.com/malwarebytes/mbam-setup.exe, right click on the link and select Save As or Save File (As depending on your browser), save it to a location where you can find it easily later. - 2. SUPERantispyware On-Demand only in free version.
Don’t worry about reported tracking cookies they are a minor issue and not one of security, allow SAS to deal with them though. - See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HTTP_cookie.