Hotmail security breach: How to protect yourself against phishing attack

The announcement came, Monday, after Microsoft found that usernames and passwords belonging to some 10,000 users of its popular Hotmail email service were exposed on Pastebin, a site normally used by software developers to share snippets of code.

Similarly, Google and Yahoo said there was some security breach relating to their email services - Gmail and Yahoo Mail - and they were working on the problem.

All the three technology giants, who control 70 percent of online traffic worldwide, said the security breaches were result of phishing attack, an 'industry-wide problem."

According to Graham Cluley, a consultant with security company Sophos, the compromise of email accounts is only a part of a bigger problem out there as about 40 percent of people normally keep the same username and/or password for every website they use. In other words, someone who has access to username and password of the leaked Hotmail account could also potentially have access to other online accounts maintained by the victim, including social networking account and bank account.

However, Microsoft is not the first company to report a phishing attack.

Last week, world's largest social networking site in terms of users, Facebook said it has intensified its fight against cyber criminals who hoodwink users out of their had-earned money by shutting down suspicious of fake accounts.

According to Facebook, its security team has noticed an increase in number of complaints from users that their login information is collected through phishing sites and then their Facebook accounts are secretly accessed to ask family and friends of the victim for money.

Recently, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) also issued an advisory, warning web surfers and users of social networking sites such as Facebook to take precautions against the cyber criminals.

These criminals, FBI warned, after hijacking someone's account will "change the user's passwords and eventually send out distress messages claiming they are in some sort of legal or medical peril and requesting money from their social-networking contacts."