E-Mail Hacks - A Bigger Problem Than You Think

E-mail Hacks - A Bigger Problem than you Think

Let’s look at what e-mail hacking is really all about and why it could be much more painful than just having to sort through our spouse’s energy drink messages.

We’ll start with how our e-mail accounts get hacked, and then move to the personal and financial issues that stem from these hacks. Finally, we’ll touch on how to avoid your very own e-mail hack and what to do if you do get hacked.

Fun fact – According to Symantec, about 40 billion spam e-mails went out per day in 2011.

It’s a new age now, and the $32 billion U.S. cyber-crime industry is far more sophisticated. The e-mail hack of today includes - our email address and the password that goes with it. At best, some cyber-creep has full access to our private e-mail correspondence.

Dumb and Trusting
Today, the only thing we should have to worry about is keeping your password safe: Relax and assume your e-mail address will be harvested the first time you create an Internet account, but don’t lose sleep over it because you have a secure password.

E-mail accounts get hacked in many ways – some because of what I call “personal dumb” and some due to “corporate dumb.”

I see three major cases of e-mail dumb:

• Bad Choices – Americans are lazy, and we whine when we have to work too hard to protect our own interests. Given that chance, we’ll use passwords that are embarrassingly easy to guess. Common bad choices include ‘12345’, ‘qwerty’ and ‘love’. When pushed (or required) for something more complex, we will use our dog’s name and birth year (ginger2001) or ‘Password1’ (after all, this is more than seven characters and contains a capital letter and a number, right?). In truth, having no password at all would be just as effective as these. Hackers have automated programs that will crack these common passwords in minutes.

Email Security Tips• Undeserved Trust – We seem to have a mistaken impression that any company with an Internet presence must be smart and trustworthy enough to keep our personal information private. However good this makes us feel, it cannot be further from the truth. We live in a time when the FBI, CIA, Zappos and Yahoo (to name just a few recent cyber failures) get hacked. These guys have million-dollar security budgets! Instead, you should start every Internet day with the assumption that everything shared may end up in a far-away cyber-crime lab. Your e-mail addresses and associated passwords are no exception.

• Malware – Studies have shown that more than 50% of all home computers have some form of malware installed. We used to call these silent background programs “viruses,” but in fact, the term “malware” (malicious software) is a far better name for software whose sole purpose is to send out spam (where did you think spam came from?), threaten large companies with attacks (yes, your home computer may unwittingly have been one of the many that helped bring down the CIA website), and collect and report your every keystroke. A resident malware program hanging out on your home PC would have no problem collecting your Yahoo, Hotmail of Gmail login credentials.

More interesting & informative reading here: http://www.securityweek.com/e-mail-hacks-bigger-problem-you-think