Hotmail Hack

[DeeLicious]

how easy is it for someone to hack into a Hotmail account, and what's the best way of ensuring that can't happen?

[Buenchico]

It can't be particularly easy or it would be happening all of the time.

In my opinion, a far greater risk is that of Hotmail (a.k.a Outlook) messing things up. I gave up on Hotmail about two decades ago because I kept getting locked out of my Hotmail accounts and there are still plenty of posts on AB from people who experience similar problems with Hotmail/Outlook (which I wouldn't touch with an infinite number of the proverbial bargepoles).

If you want to ensure that your email account is safe, switch to a decent provider. Gmail is far better than Hotmail/Outlook but, in my opinion, GMX is better still. It's the work of a few moments to open an account with GMX. (You can then use the 'mail collector' facility to get mail from your old Hotmail address automatically forwarded to your new GMX one, so you won't miss any mail.

https://www.gmx.co.uk

[Guilbert53]

Best way to not get hacked is:

Have a "complex" password, not the name of your cat or dog, or your wife / husband / children.

Use a combination of letters and numbers and lower and upper case - such as abc4XYZ5

But VERY importantly, don't use the same password on other email systems or on web sites.

For example you may register for a web site using your email address and password as follows - [email protected], password - football.

But that may ALSO be the userid and password to log on to your email system.

So if someone hacks the website and finds a user [email protected] with password football they can also log on to your email system.

And if you also use the same logon details for say Amazon they can log on there and order themselves a new speedboat using your details.

So the best way to NOT get hacked is make it more difficult for the hacker.