How to avoid getting your emails hacked
Introduction
Some of you may be wondering why this thread was made and the answer is in most of the recent events. There have been multiple admins, mods and high trusted sellers that have had their MSN's and emails hacked. This is a basic outline on the main ways to keep safe. This generally doesn't outline all the phishing and keylogging scams out there but you can view my stickied thread in the runescape general section about how to avoid getting hacked which is the same concept. This guide underlines the recovery email aspect of it.
Recovery Questions
The recovery questions are the thing that most people screw up on with old emails because they do it without thinking about it. The recovery answer needs to be something that only you know, not your city or your mothers birth place because that is still pretty easy to find. Make it something like a pet or your password would even be good, something that nobody can guess easily.
Recovery Email
The recovery email is another major problem. Some people don't even think when they add a recovery email and they write something random. With providers such as hotmail, there have been multiple ways of finding out someone's secondary address and they have been used against thousands of people. If you can, don't set a recovery email and make sure that if you do have one, you make sure it's a real one and secure as well.
Email Providers
You don't really think about it that much but there is a MASSIVE difference between email providers. The best one is going to be your internet providers but some people are unable to do that. Hotmail in my experience is the most un-secure provider. All you need is their IP (Easily obtainable), their name and their postcode and you can pretty much take their email account. Hotmail is great because it instantly signs you up for a messenger ID but it should only really be used as a personal email. Mail.com is very unsecure because you have to pick one of their silly security questions that are easily guessable. Mail.com would only be useful for personal emails that are not used for purposes such as sythe trades. The best provider security wise is defiantly gmail/google. Gmail doesn't take any information on signup so no personal information can be used to recover email accounts. Gmail/google allows you to set your own recovery question that could be something that only you know such as your uncles cousins uncles grandfathers mother or something along the lines of that. Yahoo is pretty good due to it requesting 2 recovery questions. Yahoo isn't as good as gmail because it allows you to recover with the persons b'day + postcode if it's a old email address.
Information stored on the account
Most providers other than gmail require information like your name, Date of birth, postcode and other various information. If you use social networking sites with the email, it is pretty easy for hackers to get a hold of it because most of your information is sitting there for them to see. What I would recommend doing is, making a email account with real information and never giving out any of your personal details to anyone or make a email that is connected to social netowrking sites and putting fake information on it. I don't think putting fake information on things is a good idea but it's better than getting hacked and you always can change it later on.
Conclusion
I hope you have read this and gone and taken a good look at your emails right now. If you are unsure about anything, feel free to hit me up with a PM or post it here. If you would like me to add something or edit something, feel free to also post here.
