Although it’s not considered a “best practice” to use a free email service as the administrative or registrant contact for your domain names, I know quite a few people who do use services such as Hotmail and Gmail.
This morning, BBC News and Neowin are reporting that account and password details from about 10,000 Hotmail accounts have been posted online, and it is suspected that there could be many more accounts exposed. If a hacker or cyber thief has access to the email account connected to domain names, he could easily request a password change on the account and gain access to the associated domain names.
If you use a free email service – and even if you don’t – maybe now is a good time to change your password. You might also consider security services from domain registrars such as Name.com’s NameSafe VIP Service or Moniker’s MaxLock service, where someone needs more than simply an account password to make domain changes.
Passwords have truly become the key to “Riches” in the 21st century…
It is a shame that there are not ways to validate that your password has not been compromised – sort of a “Green or Red” password status. Would this be affective at all or just a false sense of security?
I believe that we have probably reached the era where biometrics should take over 100% to prevent widespread identity theft and cyber crimes.
Off the subject: A friend of mine shared a story with me about their bank the other day. They called it “Bank of Mexico” v/s America because they said that they consistently watch tellers and bank managers approve new accounts without any type of ID required for obvious illegal immigrants – is this not big corporate America enabling a known problem just for cash flow during hard times? Why is there such an accepted double standard in the U.S. for legal and illegal citizens?
Biometrics would sure sort out that problem in addition to many of the password issues.