[Serious] To all Hotmail users

[kregg]

BBC have a news report on I believe some phishers getting hold of about thousands of emails, potentially more. If you do have a Hotmail account, I'd recommend you change the password, just to make sure.

Neowin forums can confirm the case too.

[rjv_rnjn]

It would be interesting to know if it was just a phishing scam or some security breach.

[abhijit]

BBC have a news report on I believe some phishers getting hold of about thousands of emails, potentially more. If you do have a Hotmail account, I'd recommend you change the password, just to make sure.

Neowin forums can confirm the case too.

I don't know about a password leak, but I noticed last week, everyone on my address book got an email from me, that I didn't send out.

[sparbag]

Hello all,

If you are using hotmail as an account the please ensure you are required to both type in your username and password. Do not allow your account to only require passwords.

On a secondary note. Legislation, both in the UK and US, has stringent behavioural aspects to how the law is exercised. The UK perspective:

If you come across a computer whereby it is logged in and it is not your computer, and you know this, if you use this computer without authorization you are breaking the law.
If you are using a software package that requires a login and the user data and login data are supplied, but you log into the account you are breaking the law again.
Under UK law (Computer Misuse Act and Criminal Justice Act) you risk a 5 year prison sentence and/or a £5,000 fine. The fact that the user offered no security is irrelevant in the same way that a house door may be open. You have no right of entry.

Kind regards

Steve

[kregg]

Just an update, Microsoft confirms it was a phishing attack, which means that spoofed pages were used to harvest the thousands of email addresses and passwords.

Also, sparbag, nobody (yet) knows who this person is who did the phishing attack, so it is a tad bit early to be coughing up legislations

[Pradeep1210]

I wonder why firefox asks me to enter the password twice.
When I enter it the first time it always shows the login failure message (regardless of whether password was correct or not). The second time I log in successfully. Could I be a victim too? Or this is some problem with the hotmail login page itself?

[I_Love_My_Vans]

Quick, close your Hotmail account and switch to a superior mail provide, perhaps Gmail!

[kregg]

Quick, close your Hotmail account and switch to a superior mail provide, perhaps Gmail!

Nope, that won't help.

[I_Love_My_Vans]

That's clearly a fake article, it shows a woman using a computer!

Sort your life out Kregg!

[kregg]

Hey, I'm a GoogleTard too, but I'd rather be safe than sorry.

And besides, it was a phishing attack. It wasn't a hack at Microsoft/Google/AOL's databases, it was simply a fake look-a-like website. o_O

[I_Love_My_Vans]

*phew* I had a line of sexist jokes lined up, good job I don't need to use any of them :-)

[kregg]

What is this I don't even

[kleinma]

Host your own exchange server

[Nightwalker83]

Luckily, I use outlook to log-in to my email account!

[kregg]

What is this I don't even

[KiwiDexter]

Host your own exchange server

And to be totally safe don't connect it to the internet

[wossname]

That's clearly a fake article, it shows a woman using a computer!

Sort your life out Kregg!

That's the stuff. I just fired a small piece of sandwich out of my nose.

[Davadvice]

only need to worry if you followed that link in that e-mail that asked you to log in to the email account you are alread logged into to???

some of the people that fall for this should not to be allowed to use a computer.

does anyone here us a hotmail account for anything other than junk ? I use my ISP for my primary mail accounts that way i can hold them liable should it all go wrong.

they are stating that the most common password was 123456, when i get directed to one of these sites pishing for info i normaly type in a load of nonsence as i suspect some of the 123456 passwords are

[rjv_rnjn]

...when i get directed to one of these sites pishing for info i normaly type in a load of nonsence...

That's like spamming a spammer!

[JuggaloBrotha]

The whole key to phishing is getting the user to give you their password, so those 10,000 hotmail accounts means that 10,000 people clicked the link in the email and typed in their password on the fake hotmail page, which means they deserve what they got.

Now if someone hacked the hotmail DB and got the account info without the user's knowledge, now that's something to be concerned about, but a meager phishing scam, come on people, that happens all the time, STOP BEING STUPID BY CLICKING THE LINK.

[Valleysboy1978]

Sorry but anyone who's been taken in by something like that should have their PC taken away from them. Idiots *rolleyes*