my email has been hacked
sandnsea1
Newbie

Someone has used my email to send msgs to my contacts.  I've changed my password after speaking to Verizon agent.  I've just been informed by a family member that another email has been received  "from me'.  Just changed my password again.  Can I also change my userid?  Would appreciate any help.  

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Re: my email has been hacked
Hubrisnxs
Legend

once you set a user id it's there for the life of your account.  So you will want to change your password again at www.verizon.com/repair

Make sure to use a mixture of numbers and letters, and try your best to substitute vowels for numbers.  1 instead of an i, 3 instead of an e 0 instead of an o, etc.... remember, hackers have dictionary's, and most of the time that is what they are doing. 

Holly14 as a password, will get cracked very easy,   H01Ly14 may not be so easy. 

Also try to keep it at 9 characters and above, according to business week, that will take years, vs months or minutes to crack.  

How Long it Takes Hackers to Crack your Passwords

Many of us have had problems with people hacking our email passwords, bank passwords, facebook passwords - you name it.

How Long It Takes Hackers to Crack Your Password

You already knew that a longer password is more secure, but how much more? BusinessWeek says a 6 character password (just letters) can be cracked in just 10 minutes while a 9 character password complete with letters, uppercase, numbers and symbols will take 44,530 years to crack. Take a look at the image to see other comparisons, the first column describes your password, the other columns show you how long the hackers need to hack your password. [BusinessWeek via Neatorama]

Food for thought.

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Re: my email has been hacked
somegirl
Champion - Level 3

Also make sure you change your Secret question and answer, and run a virus scan on any pc you check your mail from.