Girlfriends Hotmail Account Hijacked - How?

DrScotsman

aliEnRIK wrote: »

Hotmails one of the least safe email systems you can use. I have one, but its very rarely used. Id recommend a change of accounts (I use gmail personally)

Can I ask how it's one of the least safe?

Don't get me wrong, I detest Hotmail too and me and my brother are always telling other family members to switch to Gmail. But half of this is because Gmail's features are generally better (Hotmail had the 2MB limit for far too long!!) and the other half is personal prejudice . I never thought Hotmail was any less safe.

I know there's probably a correlation between Hotmail and hacking - because Hotmail is seen as "Microsoft easy email" and hence more likely to be used by [strike]morons[/strike] less advanced users. But is there causation?

John_Gray

A couple of months ago there was a news account that a large bunch of Hotmail accounts had been compromised. This affected at least three of the people who email in to my work using Hotmail accounts.

The only solution is for her to change her Hotmail account address, or to change from Hotmail. Googlemail does a pretty good job of filtering out spam - at least it does for Virgin Media email accounts, which have moved across to that platform.

custardy

DrScotsman wrote: »

Can I ask how it's one of the least safe?

Don't get me wrong, I detest Hotmail too and me and my brother are always telling other family members to switch to Gmail. But half of this is because Gmail's features are generally better (Hotmail had the 2MB limit for far too long!!) and the other half is personal prejudice . I never thought Hotmail was any less safe.

I know there's probably a correlation between Hotmail and hacking - because Hotmail is seen as "Microsoft easy email" and hence more likely to be used by [strike]morons[/strike] less advanced users. But is there causation?

probably because its M$ and more likely to be targeted

aliEnRIK

DrScotsman wrote: »

Can I ask how it's one of the least safe?

Don't get me wrong, I detest Hotmail too and me and my brother are always telling other family members to switch to Gmail. But half of this is because Gmail's features are generally better (Hotmail had the 2MB limit for far too long!!) and the other half is personal prejudice . I never thought Hotmail was any less safe.

I know there's probably a correlation between Hotmail and hacking - because Hotmail is seen as "Microsoft easy email" and hence more likely to be used by [strike]morons[/strike] less advanced users. But is there causation?

Its either ~
Its easier to hack

or because its microsoft it gets targetted more

Or both

Im really not sure how, but the sheer number of people whove been genuinely hacked is frightening

tabskitten

This happened to me last month and it was used to send a advert for Viagra to my whole contacts list
SO EMBARRASSING!!

joeypesci

It's neither more secure or less secure than gmail. But it's what targeted the most. gmail has been hacked in the past I believe and we have the recent China Google hack. China are continuing to target gmail but are probably targeting others.

aliEnRIK

joeypesci wrote: »

It's neither more secure or less secure than gmail. But it's what targeted the most. gmail has been hacked in the past I believe and we have the recent China Google hack. China are continuing to target gmail but are probably targeting others.

So what security do they BOTH have if theyre exactly the same?