PC World has recently reported that over 10,000 Hotmail account usernames and passwords were posted online by hackers who wanted to show that they could gain access to sensitive information. The accounts posted included those that started with ‘A’ and ‘B’ in alphabetical order. The total number of accounts hacked could be upwords of 100,000 that were not posted, but are compromised.

PC World posted the following statement on their website: “According to Computerworld, a Microsoft spokeswoman stated “We determined that this was not a breach of internal Microsoft data and initiated our standard process of working to help customers regain control of their accounts” in an e-mail response.”

This information is being reported by many websites to have been the result of a phishing scam, where thieves send out emails or place website banners that look like they are generated by the company being hacked. They find that some computer users will fill out their personal information, thinking that the company is asking for it. Please keep in mind that no company should be contacting you via email, banner or link to ask you to give them your username and password to your account. This is information that you are to keep to yourself. If in doubt, you can report suspicious emails by contacting the support team of the website that is in question by TELEPHONE. You can also report suspicious emails to the Federal Trade Commission at www.ftc.gov.

Another helpful tip is that you should use the latest version of your Web Browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, etc). These are updated to help protect you from these type of scams by warning you in advance if a link or website has been reported as potentially fraudulent.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 12th, 2009 at 11:19 am and is filed under Data Breach. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.