Email Phishing Scam Worsens
Earlier this week, the internet went crazy when news was released that more than 10,000 Hotmail email account usernames and passwords were posted on a website as part of a phishing scam. The accounts that were affected were said to be those that started with “A” and “B”.
However, everything only got worse from there. It was discovered on Wednesday that more email accounts were compromised - this time from Yahoo, Gmail, Comcast, Earthlink and AOL. This amounts to more than 30,000 usernames and passwords being collected and posted online for the world to see.
The worst part about the whole thing is that the email providers are not at fault - nor was it a computer hacker. The information was collected via phishing scams, which come in the form of fake emails and websites. There was also an increase reported in the amount of spam emails with links to fake websites that were being sent from accounts belonging to Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo users.
When users come across phishing scams like this, they get tricked into giving out their usernames and passwords. Plus, users aren’t really heeding the warnings from service providers about making their passwords complex when signing up. This news comes as analysts have found that many of the users who were compromised had passwords like “123456″ and “123456789″. So the fault really lies with people that trust the internet too much.
In spite of all this dark news, there is light for the people who were compromised from this scam. Google has a copy of the list and is forcing their email users to change their passwords immediately. It’s very likely that the other email providers involved will do the same.