As there is some news that hackers have captured passwords of thousands of Windows Live Hotmail users, webmail services of Google and Yahoo have also been affected by hacking attempts, so we should be more careful about our passwords security.

Windows Live users not only access Live mailboxes through these passwords but they also access other services offered by it, like web-based document editing service, and its online data storage service ‘Skydrive’. Microsoft has recently blocked thousands of its email accounts on the suspicion that passwords of these email accounts have been hacked, many of them were hacked by phishing attacks.

List of hacked passwords are openly available on some websites, which makes this information accessible to a network of people who could easily exploit this information. One report is that 30,000 webmail login credentials have being publicized on PasteBin, this list has passwords and usernames of accounts belong to different webmail service providers, including GMail and Yahoo.

The recent reports of phishing attacks and passwords hack must be taken seriously as many of us use common passwords for our multiple email accounts, and sometimes we also use common passwords for our webmail and financial services accounts we have on the web like PayPal and eBay. We should be more aware about our financial information security and must not use same passwords for all of our accounts. We should always choose complex passwords for our accounts. Password security is very important for us to avoid any data or financial loss.

Please also read our another article on personal financial security: Is Your Financial Data Secure Enough?