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I'm seeing a lot of online email accounts being hacked lately. I'm guessing someone hacks into the account and then accesses to send the spam I'm getting. (It's happened to 2 friends and one customer in the last month).

I'd like to post some suggestions but thought I'd see if there was something good out there (I looked and didn't find a good simple but comprehensive one).

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It seems more likely to me that you're dealing with backscatter and not hacked email accounts. What's led you to believe that the email accounts in question have been hacked? – joeqwerty Feb 9 '11 at 13:13
Many spammers fake legitimate email addresses to make it look like it comes from someone you know. As joeqwerty said, what makes you think the account was hacked? – GregD Feb 9 '11 at 13:19
Your users/friends personal accounts are not your problem in a professional capacity. – Dan Feb 9 '11 at 13:55
The email had "from" (in both cases) a valid person who I'd corresponded with. So the odds that a random email would have the "from" of someone I'd emailed seems very low. They'd have to forget the customer's email AND email everyone in the entire planet to randomly get it to me. Seems more likely someone hacked them and got their address list. – Clay Nichols Feb 28 '11 at 1:52

migrated from serverfault.com Feb 9 '11 at 19:11

closed as off topic by random♦ Feb 10 '11 at 6:44

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2 Answers

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This is the best option I've found so far: http://www.ehow.com/how_5663358_prevent-account-getting-hacked.html

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Ugh. I loathe content farms. – GregD Feb 9 '11 at 13:48
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The US Government, through the FTC, has released a very large volume of end-user information about how to protect themselves on line called OnGuard Online.

From the main page, if you click on 'Topics' and start browsing through the list you will see several that relate specifically to email and/or phishing. I feel like they've done a great job of compiling the information and making it easy to understand.

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