Australian Competitions Club

Public Foyer => General Information => Topic started by: Administrator on Wednesday 07 October 2009, 09:35:12 am



Title: Warning about Hotmail and other free email services
Post by: Administrator on Wednesday 07 October 2009, 09:35:12 am
Microsoft are investigating the on-going problem of hacked email accounts.
A few days ago, the details of tens of thousands of Hotmail email accounts were posted on the internet.
We urge all our members who use Hotmail accounts for entering competitions to change your password.
If you've been getting a lot of SPAM if would also be a good idea to change your Hotmail email address.

Free email services are regularly hacked and we strongly recommend that you never use a free email account when dealing with financial institutions such as Paypal or other on-line banking services.

To ensure the legitimacy of our members and protect the privacy of others, the Compingclub does not accept Hotmail or other free email service addresses during registration.


Title: Re: Warning about Hotmail and other free email services
Post by: chatee4 on Wednesday 07 October 2009, 11:25:12 am
Thanks for the warning admin. I use Yahoo mail for entering comps, Were they hacked as well? I have not had any spam with yahoo so far.

Its nice to have a heads up about these things. Thanks!


Title: Re: Warning about Hotmail and other free email services
Post by: Major Tom on Wednesday 07 October 2009, 11:39:02 am
Yahoo was fine - it was only hotmail accounts that were attacked. I've had the same yahoo account for 8 years and it's never been hacked.

Another point is that you should never use the same password on your email account as on other sites - so if they get into your email account, they can't have a look through it for what other sites you are signed up to and use the same password to get into them. It is also a good idea to include numbers in your passwords, and don't make them real words. Two or three words and numbers mixed in together is harder to hack.

BTW - the email that were hacked were as a result of phishing - were the members clicked on a link to another site from an email.

be careful what you click on!!


Title: Re: Warning about Hotmail and other free email services
Post by: deejay on Wednesday 07 October 2009, 11:41:29 am
Apparently Gmail and Yahoo mail have had the same treatment as Hotmail  :(


Title: Re: Warning about Hotmail and other free email services
Post by: Major Tom on Wednesday 07 October 2009, 11:49:02 am
Microsoft, Google, and Yahoo! stressed that hackers did not breach their databases, but rather email users were conned into revealing information.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/a/-/technology/6149671/hackers-hook-web-email-users-with-phishing-scams/

If you think you might have clicked on something you shouldn't have, change your passwords!



Title: Re: Warning about Hotmail and other free email services
Post by: doc on Wednesday 07 October 2009, 02:08:41 pm
Hubbies Hotmail account was hacked some months ago. Changed the password to something unintelligible; no prollies since...... :shock:


Title: Re: Warning about Hotmail and other free email services
Post by: heiding on Thursday 31 December 2009, 02:16:39 pm
its good to replace letters with symbols, like @ for the letter a etc.  can make it a bit easier to remember the pw if its still a 'word'.