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Bennieboy©

macrumors 65816
Jan 15, 2009
1,276
1
england
Dont think it's much to worry about, how many people actually use a hotmail account as theyre main secure email? and given how many security problems microsoft actually has, it seems only fitting that this would happen sooner or later lol
 

9822737

Cancelled
Original poster
Jul 23, 2008
773
15
Dont think it's much to worry about, how many people actually use a hotmail account as theyre main secure email? and given how many security problems microsoft actually has, it seems only fitting that this would happen sooner or later lol

Haha I sense no sympathy there! But good point about no one using Hotmail as their main email account.

AnDy
 

PeteB

macrumors 6502a
Jan 14, 2008
523
0
The significant issue here isn't the people who use hotmail as their primary or secondary email (or even just for messenger), but the people who habitually use the same password on multiple systems.

for example, someone might for simplicity, use the same password on their hotmail/msn, ebay, paypal, etc.

For them, this issue is huge....
 

Rodimus Prime

macrumors G4
Oct 9, 2006
10,136
4
For everyone pointing and laughing at Microsoft, it's not just Hotmail. It turns out Yahoo and Gmail got hit, too.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9139000/Gmail_Yahoo_Mail_join_Hotmail_passwords_exposed

And yet again more proof that the media is going down the crapper and no longer reports the truth. They report some twisted version of the truth.

The mainstream media wrote about how it is all Microsoft and went with the standard smear. If people think the media reports the complete truth then they are idiots.
The quoted article post more of the complete truth.

Sad...
 

MasterDev

macrumors 65816
Sep 14, 2009
1,036
0
I still don't understand how people get caught up in phishing... It's not that hard to know it's a fake website or a fake email...
 

iPhone 62S

macrumors 6502a
Aug 18, 2009
993
0
Who the hell falls for phishing these days anyway? You'd have to have either a very old browser, or be very stupid.
 

dmmcintyre3

macrumors 68020
Mar 4, 2007
2,131
3
Was it just one of those emails that say you need to go to hacker.com/http://www.hotmail.com/usermaintnence/ and type your password into there or the account will be deleted or the like? Are people seriously that stupid to not look at the address bar and see that the site is not yahoo or hotmail? I always ignore them or spam the list with fake addresses and passwords.:D What's funny is that most don't even give you an error when you do it and use a fake account and password because they can't tell!
 

Rodimus Prime

macrumors G4
Oct 9, 2006
10,136
4
Who the hell falls for phishing these days anyway? You'd have to have either a very old browser, or be very stupid.

well lets assume they get 0.01% return on the phishing. Well to hit 10,000 you only need to send out 100 mil emails. That means 99.99% of the people out there are smart enough not to fall for it but that .01% that are not what I would call exactly very smart people.
 

steve2112

macrumors 68040
Feb 20, 2009
3,023
6
East of Lyra, Northwest of Pegasus
And yet again more proof that the media is going down the crapper and no longer reports the truth. They report some twisted version of the truth.

The mainstream media wrote about how it is all Microsoft and went with the standard smear. If people think the media reports the complete truth then they are idiots.
The quoted article post more of the complete truth.

Sad...

That's one reason I posted. I have also seen some people having the typical "HA! Typical insecure Microsoft", so I thought I would enlighten some people. That type of attitude bugs me.

well lets assume they get 0.01% return on the phishing. Well to hit 10,000 you only need to send out 100 mil emails. That means 99.99% of the people out there are smart enough not to fall for it but that .01% that are not what I would call exactly very smart people.

You hit the nail on the head. They don't HAVE to have a lot of people fall for the scheme. It's the same thing with spam. When you send out that much crap, even if only a tiny percentage of targets fall for it, you still are successful. There was an article a couple of weeks ago discussing how many people click on spam links, some of them voluntarily because they are interested in the product.

Isn't just using a very old browser very stupid!?

Yes, it is. But consider the average user, especially Microsoft users. See, most of the people on this board aren't average users, and we tend to forget about average users. The fact that we chose to use an alternative OS means that we are thinking about those kinds of thing. The type of user who goes and buys the cheapest PC they can find probably doesn't care about security. A lot of that can be cured with things like automatic updates, but that doesn't always work. Windows is notorious having chain reaction failures if one update fails to install for some reason. Often, one update and fail and cause other updates afterward to fail. Most average users might not even notice this or know how to fix it.

Also, consider this. The other day, I was on my Windows box searching for some tips for a Word project. In the first 5 hits on Google was a hit that had several of my search keywords. I almost clicked on it, but the alarm bells went off in my head. I checked the domain name, and it had "warez" in the domain name. I do IT security stuff for a living and I almost clicked on the link. I doubt most average users would know to avoid that kind of stuff. I don't think anything bad would have happened, since I'm paranoid and have my system locked up :))), but something could have happened.
 

Bennieboy©

macrumors 65816
Jan 15, 2009
1,276
1
england
phishing haha i love going through my junk folder seeing " important" emails from banks i dont bank with asking to update my details, always including a hotlink, wave ya mouse over it and ya browser says some russian appended site or some guff haha some people are really sad,
 
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