E-Mail hacked again!

[Colin]

Hi all

 

My Hotmail account has been hacked (probably while I was on holiday in Kefallonia last week), and loads of junk messages have been sent out to almost anyone in my Contacts list.

 

Usual warning - if you think it's not a proper message (I've not sent many e-mails lately), please delete without opening.

[Bernard Lamb]

My wife recently had her Hotmail account hacked.

They even managed to hack the text message reset procedure so she could not recover the account..

A very long and painful phone call to India was required to get the account suspended.

At the moment it seems you need to be very wary of Hotmail.

Bernard

[Kenton]

 

At the moment it seems you need to be very wary of Hotmail.

 

As said above - nothing new.

 

Gmail/yahoo/hotmail/.. should only be used as disposable accounts. Set one up - get what you want sent there (eg quotes from meercats and their ilk) then forget about them/shut them down. Keep your business contacts away from your personal ones and on a secure email.

[Horsetan]

 As said above - nothing new.

Gmail/yahoo/hotmail/.. should only be used as disposable accounts. Set one up - get what you want sent there (eg quotes from meercats and their ilk) then forget about them/shut them down. Keep your business contacts away from your personal ones and on a secure email.

Better still, end your Internet access altogether, and revert to writing letters, sent by post.

[cctransuk]

 As said above - nothing new.

 

Gmail/yahoo/hotmail/.. should only be used as disposable accounts. Set one up - get what you want sent there (eg quotes from meercats and their ilk) then forget about them/shut them down. Keep your business contacts away from your personal ones and on a secure email.

 

Overstating the case, methinks - unless you have some axe to grind?

 

I've been using Hotmail for some 15 years; once (possibly) my Contacts list was hacked - apart from that, no probs.

 

So what if there are idiots out there who want to play silly bu**ers? It doesn't take much effort to Junk the obvious trash.

 

Chill out - life's too short!

 

Regards,

John Isherwood.

[Richard Lee]

Some people don't get email accounts with their Internet, so something like a couple of Yahoo or Gmail accounts is an essential for them.

[Re6/6]

Slightly OT and on a general note, I got fed up with Yahoo after all their changes and messing with what was working well .I keep it purely for 'commercial' stuff.

 

Having been hacked once, I opened an account with 'Outlook' which worked brilliantly. No advertising, no junk or spam worked well so I keep it solely for 'friends & family'.

 

Now 'Outlook' has started performing poorly with a frequent interruption message "cannot connect to Outlook, please try later".

 

Are there any recommendations please for the 'best' e-mail provider out there?

 

Thanks.

[hayfield]

I am one of those who no very little about these things, so rely on my son in law. Who I might add while initially self taught, has been noticed by the organization he works for and has been sent on advanced workshops/training etc regarding telecommunications for some years now.

 

I have relied on my provider internet provider for years and am very cautious about changing my email address as now its quite well known. But I now do have an additional one with live.com and to date had no problems with it, my wife daughter and son in law have had accounts for quite some time with them.

 

Highly recommended, but no idea how to set up one

[Bernard Lamb]

 

 

Having been hacked once, I opened an account with 'Outlook' which worked brilliantly. No advertising, no junk or spam worked well so I keep it solely for 'friends & family'.

 

Now 'Outlook' has started performing poorly with a frequent interruption message "cannot connect to Outlook, please try later".

 

 

Probably because Hotmail is now Outlook so all the bad people have migrated to it.

It was all so easy back in the day with Netscape.

Bernard

[cctransuk]

Overstating the case, methinks - unless you have some axe to grind?

 

I've been using Hotmail for some 15 years; once (possibly) my Contacts list was hacked - apart from that, no probs.

 

So what if there are idiots out there who want to play silly bu**ers? It doesn't take much effort to Junk the obvious trash.

 

Chill out - life's too short!

 

Regards,

John Isherwood.

 

raymw,

 

I am merely stating the facts in my case - there's nothing to disagree with there.

 

Fifteen trouble-free years is OK for me.

 

Regards,

John Isherwood.

[Ian J.]

Personally I don't think it's a good idea to rely on online webmail-based services like Gmail, Yahoo or Hotmail/Outlook for important stuff, and they are certainly not good places to have your contact list and/or calendar.

 

That said, I have had both Gmail and Hotmail/Outlook accounts for a number of years and they haven't been hacked (touch wood). However, I don't use them for any regular important stuff and my contacts and calendar are kept within my own system (and are still synchronizable via the web as I run an email/contact/calendar implementation on my own hardware).

[shortliner]

 

Are there any recommendations please for the 'best' e-mail provider out there?

 

Thanks.

 

Try Incredimail- has filters etc to weed out spam

[Kenton]

 

Overstating the case, methinks - unless you have some axe to grind?

 

No axe to grind - I use/have used them as anonymous accounts. I just do not like revealing all my details and certainly not contacts to all and sundry (it is not just hackers, it is google, microsoft and their ilk).

You may be comfortable and blissfully content in using the internet the way you do - you are in the company of thousands of others. I am not.

 

 

Better still, end your Internet access altogether, and revert to writing letters, sent by post.

No one can read my writing or understand my hieroglyphs, best that I stick with a keyboard and the occasional use of spellcheck.

[Pugsley]

Slightly OT and on a general note, I got fed up with Yahoo after all their changes and messing with what was working well .I keep it purely for 'commercial' stuff.

 

Having been hacked once, I opened an account with 'Outlook' which worked brilliantly. No advertising, no junk or spam worked well so I keep it solely for 'friends & family'.

 

Now 'Outlook' has started performing poorly with a frequent interruption message "cannot connect to Outlook, please try later".

 

Are there any recommendations please for the 'best' e-mail provider out there?

 

Thanks.

GMX are pretty good.

[raymw]

Hi John,

 

 

've been using Hotmail for some 15 years; once (possibly) my Contacts list was hacked

I was disagreeing with your apparent lack of concern with the above, passing off the results as other's problems. Personally,  hotmail, yahoo and the like - I never dealt with customers with those accounts - cheap and anonymous in my book. Of course, other's mileage will vary. It got to the stage, a few years back, that I set mailwasher to automatically delete all emails from hotmail, yahoo, aol etc. being the main source of spam/phishing, etc.

 

Best wishes,

 

Ray

[cctransuk]

Hi John,

 

I was disagreeing with your apparent lack of concern with the above, passing off the results as other's problems. Personally,  hotmail, yahoo and the like - I never dealt with customers with those accounts - cheap and anonymous in my book. Of course, other's mileage will vary. It got to the stage, a few years back, that I set mailwasher to automatically delete all emails from hotmail, yahoo, aol etc. being the main source of spam/phishing, etc.

 

Best wishes,

 

Ray

Spam / phishing? Easily recognised and gone at the touch of the Spam button.

 

Some people seem to go to inordinate ends to avoid having to do this - a sledgehammer to crack a nut?

 

Regards,

John Isherwood.

[Kenton]

 

Spam / phishing? Easily recognised and gone at the touch of the Spam button.

 

While I would agree with that in part - the real problem is that by the time you have "recognised" it, it has already been loaded into your email client's browser (ie on your PC) If that recognition is in part from opening the email in html then you will already effectively have sent a message back to the spammer that your inbox is live and open to spam. All it takes is a tiny bit of javascript code and a 1 pixel image to be "downloaded" from the spammer's server and they know all they need to know to send you more spam or even other nasty items. In effect you are asking for them.

 

On top of all that there is the "unknown" carelessness of your contacts who's PCs and email may already be compromised. How do you know, for certain, that an email from a friend/customer is actually from them and has not already been hacked?

[raymw]

Hi John,

 

Just because you and I know what to do wrt spam and phishing, does not mean that everbody else does. When you have three or four hundred emails a day, most of them spam, but occasionally a genuine new customer from Nigeria, it sort of gets to be a pita. Much easier for me to ignore all the anonymous accounts. Anyway, the spammers are becoming cleverer. The size of the problem is related to the volume of your emails, the length of time you've been on the web, whether you need a public face, etc

 

Best wishes,

 

Ray

[Andy Y]

Try Incredimail- has filters etc to weed out spam

Personally I have an abhorrence of anything that's come via such, often because it's got flamin multicoloured unicorns as background or other such offensive nonsense.

 

Anyway, most such free email services have some form of trade-off but I'm quite happy with gmail and the flexibility it gives to have stuff forwarded to so I can access from multiple devices plus the peripheral services such as Google Keep, Drive and Remote Server which enable me to function from a distance. It has the added advantage that GCHQ keep an eye on it for me in case I get terrorist spam.

[Black Sheep]

My mum's was hacked, got a random e mail from it one night so I logged in

 

It had been set up to forward everything to another address

 

Forwarding disabled I signed that e-mail up for anything and everything I could find and think of from JCB brochures to RSS feeds for Garfield, copied and deleted all info and set up a gmail account for her

[cctransuk]

 While I would agree with that in part - the real problem is that by the time you have "recognised" it, it has already been loaded into your email client's browser (ie on your PC) If that recognition is in part from opening the email in html then you will already effectively have sent a message back to the spammer that your inbox is live and open to spam. All it takes is a tiny bit of javascript code and a 1 pixel image to be "downloaded" from the spammer's server and they know all they need to know to send you more spam or even other nasty items. In effect you are asking for them.

 

On top of all that there is the "unknown" carelessness of your contacts who's PCs and email may already be compromised. How do you know, for certain, that an email from a friend/customer is actually from them and has not already been hacked?

 

Lots of theoretic dangers maybe - but fifteen years problem-free usage tells me that I've no need to become paranoid.

 

As I said - life's too short. I may spend a lot of effort to ensure that my PC stays immaculate - then get run over by a bus!

 

'Nuff said.

 

Regards,

John Isherwood.