How often do people try and access your email account?

Omaeka

Omaeka

Omaeka

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I recently had to recover my main hotmail account for the 9,999,999th time, and no matter what I do a couple of timess each year this will keep happening (2 or 3), somebody will change the password on my email. So I did a recovery and got it back, and saw a new section of hotmail security I've never noticed before: Review recent acivity. Wow, I always figured that there would be attempts but there has been at least 11 attempts to access my email (with an incorrect password provided) since the 26th of September. These were from Vietnam, Denmark, Czech, Russia and even the UK.

I think it's bonkers that this information manages to get out there, the unsuccessful sign ins have all attempted 3 times to log in, I'm on my 4th password... Go figure. I've never been phished, never been on a website other than known ones, never had a virus or anything at all that could compromise sensitive information yet somehow it gets out there none the less.

So, if you have access to this section of your Hotmail account, how often do dirty basement rats in the East attempt to get into it? Trying to figure out if this is average or normal amounts of accosting lol.
 
Had about 7-8 attempts since the 25th :p

EDIT: Should add they've never got into my account, but regularly they'll be a list of 'Failed attempt logging in' from Russia etc.
 
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That's crazy. There's someone that often tries to break into my Steam account. Fortunately, my password is something like 12hu189sod"! and they'll probably never make it past the password bit. In addition, that's my crap Steam account as the real one is linked to an ancient email of mine that I don't even have access to any more. That's where all the good stuff is.
 
dirtychinchilla said:
That's crazy. There's someone that often tries to break into my Steam account. Fortunately, my password is something like 12hu189sod"! and they'll probably never make it past the password bit. In addition, that's my crap Steam account as the real one is linked to an ancient email of mine that I don't even have access to any more. That's where all the good stuff is.
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Seems relevant: https://xkcd.com/936/
 
So all of these attempts are not THAT alarming? Pretty normal? Worried lol, changed Steam/Paypal paswords and emails to my latest.

Haze said:
0 in the last 20 years as far as I know
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You could check, I always thought there was one guy fighting me to for my account all this time yet it's probably been a different person each time. In Hotmail you just go to Account > Security > Review recent activity.


bremen1874 said:
If the OP enabled 2FA the problem would probably go away.
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Been tempted to do this but I change phones often, and always forget to change over authenticators to a newer number before selling/binning/donating my old phone.
 
Omaeka said:
Been tempted to do this but I change phones often, and always forget to change over authenticators to a newer number before selling/binning/donating my old phone.
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You can have 2FA without needing to link only to a specific phone number.

How weak are your passwords if they're getting beaten as often as you suggest?

Considered using a password manager?
 
How are they changing your password?

As per the other comments 2FA would be helpful.

I get people trying to log into or attempting to reset my social media passwords, though it doesn’t affect anything, I just get sent a link I can ignore.
 
If your mail was used on a hacked forum or account list, which mine shows up as 3 or 4 times now... It's probably gonna be part of a huge list going around and periodically botted now and then.

Never compromised but frequently attacked.
 
Efour said:
If your mail was used on a hacked forum or account list, which mine shows up as 3 or 4 times now... It's probably gonna be part of a huge list going around and periodically botted now and then.
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Mine was on a list. So I know get a ridiculous amount of spam email, I've not had unauthorised access to it though.
 
Not often but I keep getting people signing up to stuff and using my email address resulting in me getting all their emails. Had one not long ago who had signed up to a gym so I reset his password and logged into his gym account. Turned out he had his credit card on file so I booked him up with £500 worth of classes. Needless to say the emails stopped a few days later. :D
 
ubern00b said:
Seems relevant: https://xkcd.com/936/
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I've been using that system for a long time. Current password will take 7.308489025847019e+27 years according to this website.

That Steam account didn't always have that level of protection, though.

We had a cyber security seminar at work the other day and I spent about a day upgrading all my passwords and linking them to Lastpass. Very much worth it, I think.
 
So have you enabled fingerprint security? (if you have a phone that can)

When i goto security, i can only see myself as last login attempt, is it not possible to view a history ?
 
dirtychinchilla said:
I've been using that system for a long time. Current password will take 7.308489025847019e+27 years according to this website.

That Steam account didn't always have that level of protection, though.

We had a cyber security seminar at work the other day and I spent about a day upgrading all my passwords and linking them to Lastpass. Very much worth it, I think.
Click to expand...

Yeah I think password managers are the way forwards really, don't need to remember (or even come up with) my password for various web sites but instead am using long and randomly generated passwords... so even more secure than that easy to remember long password idea in the xkcd comic (since long passwords aren't necessarily all equal).
 
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