Email scam puts millions of Britons at risk of fraud
MILLIONS of internet users have been warned to watch out for an email scam, which is targeting popular services including Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo!
Hackers have stolen more than 30,000 email addresses and passwords and published them online. Experts fear that the private details could fall into the hands of criminals.
The breach was first thought to be restricted to Hotmail customers but has now become an industry-wide attack. Up to 21 million people who use Hotmail in the UK were warned they are at risk of being defrauded.
About 10,000 passwords were obtained by hackers who created a fake website identical to Hotmail’s to fool users into entering their email address and password. It has now emerged that another list of more than 20,000 email addresses and passwords is circulating, which contains the details for Gmail, Yahoo!, AOL, Comcast and Earthlink accounts.
The latest list was posted on Pastebin.com, the same site to which the Hotmail list was originally uploaded. It is feared that the information could be used by fraudsters to steal data such as credit card account details.
A spokesman for Google, which runs Gmail, said: “As soon as we learned of the attack, we forced password resets on the affected accounts.” A Microsoft spokesman said the firm was “working diligently” to help customers regain control of their Hotmail accounts.