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Hotmail accounts 'posted online'

Bob2002

ULTIMATE Member
Thousands of hotmail passwords have been hacked and posted online, according to reports.

Microsoft, which owns the popular web-based email system, told BBC News that it was aware of the claims and that it was "investigating the situation".

A report on technology blog newowin.net said that the details of "over 10,000" accounts had been posted to a website.

The blog suggested the accounts had been hacked or had been collected as part of a phishing scheme.

Full article here ...

Luckily! I'm! a! Yahoo! user! ... :)
 
l dont trust yahoo either, gmail all the way for me..

still not wanting to sound like a bad person but yahoo accounts are easily hacked.. depending on the server they are stored on it can take anything between 5mins to a few hours to access a majority of emails.. that could have changed tho as l am going by 3year old 0day type information (l used to hang around allot of security forums before l became a webmaster)

equally tho as a point of interest if someone has their account hacked (on any email system) heres my suggested recovery and restriction procedures to ensure it doesnt happen again.

1. change password
2. change security question
3. change alternate email address (allot use an alternate email for password recovery purposes)

missing any one of the above could mean loosing your account again, then again last time l had a hotmail account regardless of the above three suggestions the hacker who was plaguing me and the sites l ran for amusement (a banned member/script kiddie) seemed to get around that, my assumption was that he was contacting MicroSoft support and they were resetting the password for him, reason l think that was because l gained access back the same way and not once was l asked any security information l was just given access, as such l pretty much closed the account and that was the end of the situation, at that time l also lost my yahoo account and pretty much found out that Gmail was the only account l didnt have hacked... one thing l learned from that is that some kids on forums think they are better than you and if they dont get their own way they will try to cause you grief, what he didnt know tho was that privacy and keeping his personal details offline would have stopped me finding his phone number and telling his parents LOL
 
I am not too worried about the Hotmail news because the data appears to have been collected from phishing and I always type the hotmail site manually. Also my password is different for everything (though I do forget some of them) and I always use a combination of letters and numbers with some element of random known only to me.
 
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Have to agree with Mark here. If the server had been hacked directly, far more than 10,000 accounts would have been compromised.

Obviously, this info was harvested via a fishing scam. If you're not the kind of scrub to fall for that type of thing, then you're safe. I'm not even going to change my password!

And anyways, Microscoft have locked down the affected accounts, so if you still have access to yours, then you weren't compromised!
 
I am not too worried about the Hotmail news because the data appears to have been collected from phishing and I always type the hotmail site manually. Also my password is different for everything (though I do forget some of them) and I always use a combination of letters and numbers with some element of random known only to me.

Always good to do that. I also have different pw's for each site. It is easy to forget, a friend of mine does. I keep a little notebook with my pw's in, I keep telling him to do the same. Where I live there is no one who would want to gain access to any site I use, so security isn't an issue as far as them being discovered.

I have another friend who uses 1 pw for so many sites, not the best idea in the world.
 
Sadly, I know a few people like that.

The theoretically "worst" one though, is actually the one I'd worry about least, as she does not use online banking, e-bay, Amazon, or anything else where money changes hands or her card details might turn up apart from her ISP's control panel.
One password for everything - the name of the street she lives in, six letters, all lower case, unless they insist on you having a combination, in which case the first letter is a capital and the house number is tacked on the end.

Still, it does make it easy for *me* - she's a very nice lady, but is easily baffled by most things, and if she has any problems I get a phone call...

(Problem is explained)
"Usual password?"
"Of course."
"OK - I'm in, now let me see..."
(etc.)
 
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