There has been a rise in "email account hijackings" by spammers and identity thieves on the Internet. These attackers have discovered a greater success rate of spam and identity theft if they are able to compromise a victims email account first. Reasons for this include:
- Compromising a mail account allows the attacker to harvest your entire contact database
- Spam sent from your email address to your other contacts is more likely to be clicked on
- Access to your email inbox allows the attackers to do "password resets" of your other accounts. (e.g. Amazon, online banking, etc)
Some hijackers only use the account to send spam.
You probably won't even know it's happening until your friends and family begin complaining about the strange links you've been sending.
Other hijackers will take over your account by changing passwords and using it to reset your passwords on other sites. Then they will proceed to delete your mail, contacts, and other information to cover their tracks. |
