[lotuseclat79]

Tens Of Thousands of Email Usernames and Passwords Posted Online By Phishers.

Hotmail, Gmail, Yahoo, and other email users' accounts exposed

Calin also found that of the 10,028 accounts, 9,843 were valid ones. And many used weak passwords: the most popular password was "123456," for example.

"Forty-two percent were very weak passwords," says Sophos' Jones. "Most were between six and nine characters, and all lower-case."

Trend Micro's Yaneza says the subsequent round of accounts posted from Gmail, Yahoo, and others may just be the same Hotmail victims: "I'm afraid it's people who use the same login and password [for multiple email accounts], so it's hard to put a number on how much damage" this is, he says.

Users should change their passwords every month or so given the threats out there today, Yaneza says.

-- Tom