10,000 Hotmail Accounts Hacked

From the Windows Live Team blog:

Over the weekend Microsoft learned that several thousand Windows Live Hotmail customers’ credentials were exposed on a third-party site due to a likely phishing scheme.

One site indicated more than 10,000 Hotmail credentials may have been compromised. Translation: User names and passwords were illegally posted online. Most appear to be accounts in Europe and include @hotmail.com, @msn.com and @live.com accounts. If your account was on this list, you will need to fill out the form linked in the Windows Live Team post to regain access to it, as they are blocking the known compromised accounts for obvious security reasons.

If you haven’t yet read How To Avoid Phishing Worms on WLM please take time to do so. While the illegal list was removed, for a period of time, this information was available to those who may use it for phishing schemes. It is important to know what to watch out for, and how to protect yourself.

Avoid Phishing Worms on WLM

Thank you to Jonathan Kay for giving his permission to repost his full blog entry from MessengerGeek on Live Spaces here for our BigBlueBall members. This is valuable information of which every WLM user should be aware. This is a wonderful explanation of what to watch out for, and what to do if you think you’ve been compromised.

As the most used instant messaging service in the world, it’s become more and more common to find your contacts sending out virus, spam and worm links through Messenger. There’s a lot of different types and different steps for removal, but the one most recently affecting people is a “phishing worm”. Read more