1 Way To Find Out If Your Hotmail Password Was Stolen

Unfortunately Hotmail accounts are one of the big choices of attack for many people who act illegally online trying to get into peoples accounts on websites. But sometimes there is a very easy way you can find out when it is your account details which have been taken.

Once again earlier this month (October 2009) news broke that 10,000 Hotmail accounts had ‘been compromised’ in a phishing attack. A few days prior I myself had became worried because a strange email with a spam link was sent from my address to all of my contacts. Immediately after it happened I changed my password. And a few days later I found my password had been discovered.

How To Find Out If Your Hotmail Details Where Acquired Illegally
It couldn’t be simpler. Enter your email into google.co.uk with double quotes around it EG “your_name_here@hotmail.com” and do the search.

In the case of the phishing attack above they had posted all of the details on open web forums, clear as day indexed by the search engines and you didn’t even need to sign-up for an account for the forum, you could just view them straight up. A huge list of email addresses with the passwords after them. Not all attacks like this have the details posted online but it is a possible way to find out.

In my case I found my email on 4 different forums. My account was frozen by Microsoft because so many failed attempts had been made to access the account, looks like my quick password change after 1 dodgy email limited the damage! So if you are ever worried quickly enter your email address into google and look very closely at the results.