I have noticed a fair bit recently that those who are using free services such as hotmail, yahoo and other free email providers have been experiencing those gaining unauthorised access to their accounts.

I have decided to write up a small guide on how to secure your accounts and also make sure that no unauthorised parties gain access to your account. This is meant as an explanation on how to secure your account. Not an explanation on how to crack others.

Security Questions: One way to ensure that those you wouldn't want accessing your accounts without authorisation is to instead of setting your answer to a security question, not the actual answer, but a simple password that you would easily remember and no one else would know. Unfortunately, I have seen many people have their Hotmail accounts compromised by those who could easily guess their security questions and then gain control.
Alternate Emails: The other part to those who have had their accounts compromised on Hotmail is that they haven't set an Alternate Email. Unfortunately Hotmail have a setup, so that if you can guess the security questions of the persons email accounts, they can instantly reset their password and gain access.
Passwords: Make sure that you have setup your passwords with ample complexity. Dictionary words, are those which are easily cracked, and I have seen many people using simple passwords which are quite similar to their own usename/personal name. For Example, a person called "Ireland" using the word "Irish"(Those who went to school with me will understand that one :)).

Those 3 things will help secure your accounts from potential intruders. These methods are fairly well known to normal people, and it is quite a common occurance happening in schools, especially with the easily availability of personal information being passed around due to Community Sites such as Rooster Teeth, Myspace and Facebook.

If anyone else has any inputs or comments. Feel free to email me at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it . This is my first attempt at writing up anything similar to this :)