Hotmail fights back against hacked email accounts

Microsoft has announced a new feature for Hotmail users that should help in the fight against email fraudsters and spammers.

It wouldn’t surprise me if many of us haven’t received an email which appears to come from a friend, but actually contains a bogus cry for help claiming they are stranded in a foreign country or a spammy advert.

Often in these cases your friend’s email account has been compromised because they chose a weak password, or had been using the same password in multiple places – only to have one of them phished, or were careless with their computer security.

One famous example of this happening occurred two years ago, when the Hotmail account of UK politician Jack Straw (who was the country’s Justice…

Read more in my article on the Naked Security website.

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Graham Cluley is a veteran of the cybersecurity industry, having worked for a number of security companies since the early 1990s when he wrote the first ever version of Dr Solomon's Anti-Virus Toolkit for Windows. Now an independent analyst, he regularly makes media appearances and is an international public speaker on the topic of cybersecurity, hackers, and online privacy. Follow him on Twitter, Mastodon, Bluesky, or drop him an email.

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