April 5th, 2011 | Author: 
Hit By Phishing Scheme
A phishing scheme has come to the surface where thousands of HotMail, Gmail, AOL and Yahoo user’s credentials have been compromised, with their login info posted online, in the past few days. Phishing is a major concern for many companies as the internet is rampant with many fake websites which lures users to disclose their online identities.
Microsoft Hotmail was hit hard the most with more than 10,000 of its user accounts falling prey to this scheme. Microsoft has confirmed that login credentials for several thousand Hotmail accounts have been posted on a public website and they have taken steps to protect these users and investigating into the matter. It has blocked all the accounts that were exposed and the affected users can fill out a form on the Windows Live e-mail support site to regain access to their accounts.
It was initially found that a list of around 10,000 Hotmail user credentials were posted on the pastebin.com site. A further list of about 20,000 e-mail accounts was also posted on Pastebin.com, containing login credentials for Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL, Comcast and Earthlink accounts, according to reports.This site allows exchange of codes for software programmers. Paul Dixon owner of the website said that the site will be offline for sometime to sort out this issue.
In the meantime Microsoft has asked all its users to exercise caution with their account information and to be careful with email that comes wth attachments from known and unkown sources