Microsoft hotmail email passwords compromised

If you use a Microsoft Hotmail, MSN or Live email address it’s recommended you change your password and security questions. About 10,000 hotmail passwords have been posted on pastebin.com, and that’s just user names begining with “A” or “B”.

If you do use a freebie email address it’s also worth considering getting your own email and domain name. Costing literally just a couple of pounds a year, you can get a domain name and your own email address which for a business simply looks more professional. As a side benefit you can also create multiple email addresses for your domain – a must if you want to operate more than one eBay account.

6 Responses on "Microsoft hotmail email passwords compromised"

1. 1
   ebuyerfb says:

   October 6, 2009 at 2:25 am

   According to an article I read those Microsoft is stating those passwords were discovered through phishing and not through hacking.
2. 2
   Don Riggins says:

   October 6, 2009 at 1:20 pm

   Phishing sites typically only bring 100-150 credentials with a really successful delivery system and a friendly ISP to not remove it immediately. Even a typical phishing campaign being “extremely” productive will only 2,000.

   The fact that 10k+ were found, and that Microsoft is wanting the entirety of the 2.1 million users to change the password speaks to the fact it was more than likely a network compromise than a phishing page.

   Albeit, something to mention is most of the emails were from the UK so take from that as you will.
   • 2.1
     still trading says:

     October 6, 2009 at 2:42 pm

     we think its more to do with stupid buggers, than site compromise

     there are millions of idiots out there,
   • 2.2
     Richard says:

     October 6, 2009 at 2:58 pm

     There’s a lot more than 2.1 million hotmail users, no idea where you got that figure from, it’s in the tens of millions, one source quoting 145 million which sounds about right to me, hotmail’s been around and free for a very long time.
3. 3
   Chris Dawson says:

   October 6, 2009 at 4:06 pm

   It’s almost certainly phishing – there have been new lists published with email addresses from Yahoo!, AOL, GMail as well as Hotmail/MSN/Live
4. 4
   still trading says:

   October 7, 2009 at 5:07 pm

   sales must be down with the anti virus software companies, if I ran that sort of company
   I would pay money for a story such as this to break every now and then