Email addresses and passwords posted onto the web
October 7, 2009
New reports say that the breach in security that led to Microsoft advising Hotmail users to change their passwords may just have hit users of Yahoo! Mail and Gmail. Internet hackers managed to obtain around 10,000 passwords from users in the U.K. when they set up a fake Hotmail site to phish for customer’s email addresses along with their log-in passwords.
The list of Hotmail details was then pasted onto the website Pastebin.com which is usually used by web developers. The same site recently received another post which contained the details of more that 30,000 users of email services like AOL, Yahoo! and Gmail. The list has since been removed and the site taken down for maintenance purposes.
Google have said that they are aware of the phishing scam and have claimed that they have forced those customers who may have been affected to change their passwords. They were keen to point out that the situation was not a problem with the Gmail system but a scam in which customers were fooled into giving away account information.
Microsoft and Google are looking into the problem. Yahoo! has said that as always it advises its customers to be vigilant and to take precautions such as changing passwords as often as possible. The U.K. police say that as yet they have not received any reports that fraudulent activity has taken place in relation to the latest scam.
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