Hotmail, Gmail and Yahoo! Passwords Leaked Online Security Breach Affects More Than 20,000 Accounts

You may have missed it, but yesterday Hotmail faced some serious
security breaches and had to warn a fair number of their customers that
they are potentially at risk of being defrauded after more than 10,000
accounts have been hacked into. Today, however, the whole thing got even
more serious with the likes of Google Mail and Yahoo!Mail being
affected, too.

By creating fake websites identical to Hotmail, Gmail and Y!Mail, the
hackers have managed to lure more than 20,000 users to enter their
username and password in a phishing scam. The whole list, which has been
posted anonymously about a week ago on Pastebin.com, is now becoming a
serious threat as fraudsters who had access may have stolen personal
information such as credit card numbers or SSNs.

We are aware that some Windows Live Hotmail customers' credentials
were acquired illegally and exposed on a website, a Microsoft spokesman
has added. Upon learning of the issue, we immediately requested that
the credentials be removed and launched an investigation to determine
the impact to customers. We are working diligently to help customers
regain control of their accounts.

As for Google; We recently became aware of an industry-wide phishing
scheme through which hackers gained user credentials for web-based mail
accounts including Gmail account, said a Google spokesman in charge
with Gmail. As soon as we learned of the attack, we forced password
resets on the affected accounts. We will continue to force password
resets on additional accounts when we become aware of them.

If some of the accounts were old or fake, other addresses included
Comcast and Earthlink accounts.

A common sense advise for you at the moment is to change your password
no matter if you've been contacted by Hotmail, Gmail or Yahoo. Just to
be sure!