Hacking hotmail accounts

[skater]

I have a Hotmail Email account that I created some time ago for use for a specific purpose. It hardly gets used at all, however today I noticed in my incomming emails that there was an email in my main account to me from my Hotmail account. I go to the Hotmail account and somehow someone has hacked into it and sent stuff to all the contacts there with a message that goes something like this; "Yo (insert name) check this out (insert web address).

I'm more than a little concerned about this as the password to that Hotmail account is the same password that I use for many of my logins. What do I do?

 

[luckyone]

Skater, they could have easily sent that without actually getting into your Hotmail account. It's VERY easy to impersonate email addresses. I wouldn't be too worried about it. But I probably would change at least your Hotmail password just in case.

 

[BV]

I'm more than a little concerned about this as the password to that Hotmail account is the same password that I use for many of my logins. What do I do?

Change your default password and make sure it has at least 1 upper case letter, 1 number plus a symbol such as # + etc

 

[BV]

Skater, they could have easily sent that without actually getting into your Hotmail account. It's VERY easy to impersonate email addresses. I wouldn't be too worried about it. But I probably would change at least your Hotmail password just in case.

Impersonating is easy but getting access to someone's contacts means they managed to get into the account.
Hotmail sux, I once had an account and apart from the fact that they decided to delete all my folders because I hadn't used the account for a few months, someone had got into it once, started using it and changed my password as well.
It took me a while to sort that 1 out.
In the end I gave up and never used them again.
I had a yahoo account for many years and never had any problems.
My kids are with gmail

 

[the_captain]

Check that the emails are not in your sEnt folder. If they are, then someone was in your account

Change all passwords so that they are minimum 10 characters long and use upper and Lower case characters, numbers and punctuation

Update anti virus and scan all computers

 

[skater]

I know I sound like a dill, but, can anyone help with where to find how to change the password?

 

[skater]

Check that the emails are not in your sEnt folder. If they are, then someone was in your account

Change all passwords so that they are minimum 10 characters long and use upper and Lower case characters, numbers and punctuation

Update anti virus and scan all computers

Yep! I checked that first. They are definately in my sent folder.

 

[skater]

Not feeling so stupid now. I've found and changed the password.

OK, now is there any reason to suspect that whoever did this will get into my other stuff that had the same password?

 

[BV]

OK, now is there any reason to suspect that whoever did this will get into my other stuff that had the same password?

If you are using the same user name it is a possibility.
But it could be that it wasn't a person who got into your account and in that case the risk is small.
The worry would be that a person could be behind all this computer activity and if he analyses his successful hacks he could then use your password for other hacks and eventually get to other sites you use which contain your credit card and other personal details.

 

[skater]

If you are using the same user name it is a possibility.
But it could be that it wasn't a person who got into your account and in that case the risk is small.
The worry would be that a person could be behind all this computer activity and if he analyses his successful hacks he could then use your password for other hacks and eventually get to other sites you use which contain your credit card and other personal details.

Well.....as most people here are aware, my first name is Debbie. On that email I have it shortened to Deb(last name). The username is not my name but has deb_____ as the username, that is another five letter word after my name.

As I said before, this is an account that is barely used. It has a total of around 10 contacts on it.

 

[wylie]

I heard on ABC radio the other night about a site where you can check if your email account/s have been hacked or accessed.

If you google "should i change my password" you can check up to ten addresses.

My son's hotmail account was hacked and I regularly get rubbish sent to me via his old account. He changed his email account and doesn't seem too concerned that people are receiving rubbish from his old account and says it is too hard to change.

I also regularly receive rubbish emails from an old tenant's address. I would be much more concerned that my friends think I am sending them porn links, but of more concern would be the email addresses in my address book of "professional" people I have emailed, who might not as quickly realise it is not me sending this rubbish.

Anyway, the young kids don't seem to care too much.

 

[Nathan]

I once had this from hotmail and it sent once a month an email like a bot and then became once a week and then twice a day till people started emailing me with that *****....

I changed the password and never log in anymore never the less and havent had any dramas.

It is a bot which does it.

 

[womble66]

I heard on ABC radio the other night about a site where you can check if your email account/s have been hacked or accessed. If you google "should i change my password" you can check up to ten addresses.

Checked my gmail account and it stated "It looks like your passwords may be safe. No instances of compromise are recorded in this database."

Given my account has been 'hacked' several times and this has been recorded and advised by Google (gmail) I don't know how reliable or much credence I would put in this service.

All I can suggest is change your password regularly as mentioned above and also delete all addresses from the inbuilt address books from webmail accounts as this is what they target in hacks most of the time.

IMHO its not some nerd sitting a pc with your email address and trying to 'guess' your password its more of a hi-tech automated process aimed at the backdoor weaknesses of all webmail providers such as hotmail and gmail similar to the hacks on facebook etc.

 

[Bird Dog]

I have a Hotmail Email account that I created some time ago for use for a specific purpose. It hardly gets used at all, however today I noticed in my incoming emails that there was an email in my main account to me from my Hotmail account. I go to the Hotmail account and somehow someone has hacked into it and sent stuff to all the contacts there with a message that goes something like this; "Yo (insert name) check this out (insert web address).

I'm more than a little concerned about this as the password to that Hotmail account is the same password that I use for many of my logins. What do I do?

Skater,
your email was most likely infiltrated by a Trojan virus that propagated itself through your address book.
Don't mean to alarm you but the virus may not exist within your hotmail but your computer.
Here's a couple of tips..

1: Make sure your AV (antivirus) on your PC is up to date but if you suspect your PC has been compromised, it can't hurt to download a free version of another AV (antivirus) program and run a second pass. There is no single AV that will pick up everything.
I run AVG (its free) and I've never had an issue.
2: Also run a free malware such as Spybot and run it once a month to look for anything malicious that's may be sitting dormant in your PC.
3: Passwords. I use to have many passwords for all types of websites, banking, accounting, security entry. I think at one stage I had over 20 passwords running at once. It was driving me crazy and I ended up having to store them all on a spreadsheet which as you would guess, completely negated the point of having a "secret password".
My fix was to have only three that were catagorised as High, medium and low.
High was used for banking, finance etc and things that you consider highly important.
Medium consists of things like email (which needs to be secure as identity theft can be a litigious issue) and the password to use my PC.
And low is used for most things like my password for this site and all other forums I belong to.
My way of remembering them all is to start with a highly effective password for the maximum security for the high level one (must contain a capital letter, a few numbers and in no apparent order). You can jump on the website below that can spit one out completely at random. http://strongpasswordgenerator.com/
Then use two others that you can recall for you medium and low level.
What I then do it downgrade each one every few months so that the high then becomes my medium.
The low I never change as there is nothing worth worry about if it's compromised.
That way when I go to an old website I haven't visited for years, I always know the password will be same one I've always had.
All I really then need to remember is the highest one.
When accessing the medium, I always know that it's the old (high level one)

Good luck

Cheers

B.D

 

[wylie]

Checked my gmail account and it stated "It looks like your passwords may be safe. No instances of compromise are recorded in this database."

I did the same and mine were okay. My son's came up okay too, which made me wonder...

However, the site was recommended by the chap on the ABC and he said (I think) it was a list of email addresses that had been "lost" or hacked by specific companies recently. It was in the news, but I cannot remember them.

My son's email certainly wouldn't have been one of those, so perhaps this site is fairly specifically for those major companies that were compromised.

 

[random]

What's this mob phone hacking stuff everywhere this week - how can they hack your phone ?
Or is it just some sort of bugging thing for mobiles ?

Cheers

 

[Bird Dog]

What's this mob phone hacking stuff everywhere this week - how can they hack your phone ?
Or is it just some sort of bugging thing for mobiles ?

Cheers

Most phone hacking typically occurs when you download an app to your smart phone that contains a hidden trojan virus or malware.
It then links into your service provider and shares info or can potentially dial suspect numbers that are billed by the second (EG: 0055).
If the source of the app is a little suspect, treat it the same way you would treat one on you computer....by not downloading it.

cheers

B.D

 

[random]

Uh Hu , will it ever end hey ! Owell we're safe then anyway, we don't use net or emails on ours.

Cheers