Yahoo Accounts Most Targeted in Hacking Operations

A report called “The State of Hacked Accounts” reveals information on the accounts people care for so much and the way they get overtaken.

Results show that Gmail, Yahoo, Hotmail and Facebook accounts attract the most villains, probably because that's where internauts keep their most private stuff. After Yahoo, the most sought after were Facebook (23%) and Gmail (19%).

More than half of the respondents claim they're not sure to how exactly the credentials were overtaken, while 15% recall using a public internet terminal or public Wi-Fi just before the attack. Even more interesting is that none of them admit to clicking links that might lead to malicious locations, but I doubt that's true.

As an outcome of the hack, in most cases the accounts were utilized to send out spam, but 23% are not exactly sure to what happened.

Friends are the ones who in 54% of cases informed the victims that they've suffered a breach, 31% noticed themselves and 15% received an official email. In most cases, the solution to the problem was for the owner to change the password to a more secure one, a quarter believing that it was a one time deal and did nothing to remediate the issue.

"Commtouch's poll reveals that more than two-thirds of all compromised accounts are used to send spam and scams,” Amir Lev, chief technology officer for Commtouch, said.

"This is not surprising, as cybercriminals can improve their email delivery rates by sending from trusted domains, such as Gmail, Yahoo, and Hotmail, and enhance their open and click-through rates by sending from familiar senders."

To prevent from such disasters, make sure you use a different password for each website you log-in to and be cautious when accessing the internet from a public terminal as “remember me” boxes can easily surrender your credentials to others.