Mike's Safety Belt
~~Mike Baynes, MikesWhatsNews

Email Address Theft

One of the problems with having an email address is the possibility that someone else may use it.

This may occur if you have a free account at one of the groups which provide a free address, such as Hotmail or Yahoo. All too often people use an easily guessed password, especially if you fill out an online profile and included a lot of details.

For instance I may open an account at Hotmail and choose mike902@hotmail and, in my profile, provide some details, including my zip code 90210.  If I were to use my zip code for my identity password, someone could easily guess what it was from the information given.

This is a simplistic example but you probably get the idea.

Once someone guesses your password, they will have full access to your email on the Hotmail or Yahoo web sites, and they will easily be able to send mail, which appears to come from you.

Your passwords should not be:

• your name
• your birth date
• your nickname
• any of your family members' names
• any combinations made up from your family members' names or initials, pets' names, social security numbers, or telephone numbers
• a line of keys on the keyboard, like asdfg

The best password is a combination of letters, numbers, and characters, both upper and lower cased:  i.e.; p%l1I^?A

I also see frequent spam email coming in which use variations of my email address, which are auto-generated similar names.  Examples would be Mikebike@xyz, mikeBike@xzy, mBike@xzy, Mbike@xyz, 1mikebike@xzy, 1Mikebike@xyz, and so on. 

Another thing which often happens is messages are sent which appear to come from your email address, but are not.  This can be done with most email programs.  When I set up my email program and an account, I fill in the Name to put in the sent emails.  If I use someone else's name it would appear to be from them.

Someone could also post to a group with a similar name and include your signature file.  Unless someone knew your posting style, they would probably assume it came from you.  This is especially effective in groups where the displayed information only includes (depending on how you have your settings), the sender's name and the group name.

If you ever wonder why a person may have posted a message that is very out of character, check the headers.  It could be an imposter.

Editor's Note: for info on how to check email headers, see this article:
http://personal-computer-tutor.com/abc2/v19/linda19.htm

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Mike Baynes is the editor of MikesWhatsNews .  To subscribe, send a blank email to mikeswhatsnews-request@freelists.org?Subject=subscribe

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