Email hacking is a big issue for thousands of people every day. If your Hotmail account for example has been hacked there are a couple of things that can be going on with your friend’s account, one of which is that she could be the victim of what’s called a “joe job”, when someone sends out spam to a random list pretending to be you. But they’re not, and they haven’t broken into your account, they’re just using some software that lets them specify “from = x@hotmail.com” and then looks just like they’ve used your account but haven’t.
After all, if the message you got from your friend Pegah was addressed just to you (e.g., had your yahoo.com email address as the “To:”) then that would imply that they sent messages one-at-a-time to each and every person in her address book. And that would be really tedious, wouldn’t it?
However, since you two are friends it sounds like it’s probably not a joe job after all, but rather that somehow her account has indeed been compromised or broken into somehow. Not good.
First step if you think you’ve been hacked: Change your password immediately!
Now, let’s try to figure out what’s going on. If your friend didn’t need to log in to her account that suggests that anywhere she’s previously logged in to check her email (like a public computer at the library or at school) remained logged in and if the next person on the system simply went to “hotmail.com” then they might well have found themselves logged in to her account. That’s why it’s so critical not to check the “stay logged in” box on any computer other than your own secure system.
Another possibility is that she has a virus or keylogger or spyware on her computer that let someone identify her account and password, then utilize them. I suspect that’s not the case, but it’s always good to run some decent antivirus and antispyware software to see if there are any issues. One that’s a good option and is free is AVG.
Finally, and this might be obvious, never, ever, ever share your password with any of your friends. BFF or boyfriend, it’s not that they are going to do something bad but that they too might make a mistake and log in somewhere unsafe then never tell you. Not good.
Hope this helps your friend clean things up. Again, step one, your immediate reaction to anything of this nature should be to immediately change your password to something new and complicated.
Want to secure your Linksys router? First you will need to sign into the administrator account, if you don’t know or forgot the password I will show you how to reset the password.
- If you have forgotten your LinkSys router password, the easiest thing to do is to reset your router to the factory default settings.
To restore the router configuration to factory defaults, hold the reset button on the unit for 30 seconds.
- Once your router is hard reset, you will need to login and reconfigure it again.To reconfigure your LinkSys, connect a PC to one of it’s Ethernet ports, load a web browser, and go to the URL http://192.168.1.1/. This will take you to a popup box which asks you to enter a username and password to login to your router.
LinkSys Default Password
On older LinkSys routers, the default username is blank and the default password is “admin.” On newer Linksys routers, both the default username and the default password are set to “admin.”
Once you are past the login screen, you are able to reconfigure the LinkSys router.
You want to go to the management tab and change the administrator password to something else to keep others from accessing your router.
- After changing the administrator password then you will need to enable WEP or WAP security so your nosy neighbors aren’t tapping into your wireless network. I am picking up 4 networks with my pc antenna.
People have a lot of passwords they have to remember; so it’s only natural that once in a while you will forget one. If you should happen to ever forget your OS X login account password, you can either try to recover it or else reset it completely.
Reset Any Password Except Administer Account
Mac OS X 10.2 through 10.2.8
For any account passwords with the exception of the administrator account, you can reset them from within OS X. First, login with the administrator account and navigate to system preferences from the apple menu. Next, choose the accounts icon. Be sure that the lock in the lower left hand corner is unlocked. If it is not, click it to unlock. You may be required to type in your admin password.
Now, select the username whose password that you want to change. Click the Reset Password button (Mac OS X 10.4) or the Change Password button (Mac OS X 10.5). It should now ask you to type in and verify your new password. Click the reset password button and click OK if a box pops up verifying change to your keychain.
Mac OS X 10.1.5 or earlier
For any account passwords with the exception of the administrator account, you can reset them from within OS X. First, login with the administrator account and navigate to system preferences from the apple menu. Next, choose users from the view menu. Be sure that the lock in the lower left hand corner is unlocked. If it is not, click it to unlock. Now, select the username whose password that you want to change. Click edit user. Enter a new password in both the password and verify password fields and click save.
Reset The Password To The Administrator Account
If you have lost the password to the original administrator account, than you will need an OS X disk to reset the password. More than likely it will be “install disk 1″ that should have came with your computer when you purchased it.
Insert the disk into the drive and restart the computer. As soon as you hear the chime when your computer is booting up, hold down the “C” key. If the “C” key does not boot from the disk, than try holding down the “option” key instead.
Once you have booted from disk, the OS X installer window should be on screen. Go ahead and click continue in the first box that pops up. Next, look at the toolbar located at the very top of the screen. You will see numerous options. Choose either installer menu, or the apple menu (depending on which OS disk version you are using). Under one of the top menus, you should find an option to reset your password. After you have selected reset password, it will ask you to select your hard drive. Select the hard drive and select your administer account name from the dropdown menu. Enter your new password, verify and click reset.
Everyday I have about 30 people start following Crenk on Twitter, but today I had a very interesting company show up. Tweetreplies is a new startup which sends twitter replies to your email address. I know there has been a lot of talk about this specific type of Twitter startup in the last week or so, especially with Twply.com. Unlike Twply (which sold for $1200 a few days after launching), Tweetreplies doesn’t require your Twitter username and password to actually operate. There are a lot people out there that have been talking about giving out their Twitter passwords to third party sites, so this is a great way to have a tool and not give up your password.
