This has probably happened to you: All of a sudden your friends start getting emails from you, recommending some website or other. If they have any brains, they’ll delete it.

You send out a plaintive email, telling them that your email address has been hacked.

This is, almost certainly, not true. You don’t have to hack anybody’s email account to impersonate them. It is trivial to forge the header information on an email, making it look as though it came from anyone. If you want to send an email from popefrancis@vatican.va, you can recommend a porn site to every cardinal.

(I’ve forged email addresses occasionally when trying to solve a problem.)

My point is simple: if your friends and relations start getting bogus emails from you, the odds are extremely high that your account has not been hacked. Changing email addresses won’t stop them. All you can do is ride out the storm.