How easy is it to hack email & to protect it?

donglefan

Hello, I'd be grateful for opinions on the following situation:

Location: an office of a graduate employer in The City.

Problem: person thinks that their home email (entirely separate from work email) is being hacked by office colleagues.

Reason for suspicion: colleagues mention things that they could not otherwise know including unusual topics that have been discussed on the home email during the previous week.

Home System: windows XP with Norton 2005 installed and up to date, probably running explorer 6 and outlook express.

Given that the people working in this office are intelligent with top level skills, is it feasible they could have hacked this person's personal home email account? If so, would they be likely to be doing it directly from the person's ISP or by having infiltrated the person's home computer?

I am not sure whether the person has accessed the office network remotely from home, or whether this would make any difference to the hacking issue.

The person concerned is quite inexperienced with computers and feels unable to tackle the problem themselves, so advice as to where they should look for improving internet security (a recommended company perhaps) would be welcome. The person would probably prefer to pay a premium for a well-known technology support company. Otherwise, if there are simple but effective measures with clear instructions I might be able to help out myself.

Thank you for your time.

wolfman

1) Change the password on the account. Something alpha-numeric with upper and lower case characters. 8-12 characters in length is good.

2) What kind of email account is it? Webmail, like Gmail, Hotmail etc... or POP/IMPA based like the kind of thing you get via your ISP?

3) Norton 2005 what? Anti-virus? Internet security? etc... I'd highly recommend a firewall such as Sunbelt Kerio Personal Firewall or ZoneAlarm, both of which are free. Just download and install.

4) Depending upon the email account type, the likelyhood, is generally unlikely. In most cases they'll have either guessed or key logged the password. Are you sure such details aren't being leaked via a friend etc...?

Blacksheep1979

don't store the password on the computer either via IE/firefox or in messenger. Depending on their access to the computer there is a number of things they could have done keylogger, remote access etc.

Would also change any secret question/answers just in case as well and not access personal systems from work.

tbh if these are top security proffesionals there is little that can be done, almost any security system can be bypassed if the person is determined enough.

albertross_2

Has this person accessed their personal email from work, or when using a work PC. If not, and they are using a different password for their work system, the only possibility I can think of is either a 3rd party forwarding the emails on, or a virus on the home PC forwarding to every email address it can find on the home PC (which may include some work ones).

Change passwords is the quickest solution.

donglefan

Thank you very much for the replies. I will pass them on this evening.

In reply to questions raised:

It is a POP based email that came with the person's ISP

It is Norton Internet Security 2005, with the latest updates downloaded.

A friend would not be leaking details: I think I am the only person other than the account holder who legitimately knows the password.

The person might have similar passwords for home and work: I will check.