Using Hotmail? Change your password.

And your secret question/answer combination. Soonish. Now would be good.

A text file containing at least 10,000 Hotmail/Windows Live user ID-password combinations was posted to the Internet within the past day or two, and experts figure it was a part-1-of-several-posts situation because the list they found is alphabetical starting with user ID ararat973 and ending with blando2713. According to The Register, the discovery comes at the same time that unsubstantiated Internet posts claiming passwords for all Hotmail/Windows Live accounts were leaked. That's an estimated 450 million accounts, so it's probably overstating things. (That would be a helluva leak, to be sure.) Just to be safe, you may wish to change your password and secret question anyway.

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2009/10/05/hotmail_passwords_leaked/
http://thenextweb.com/2009/10/05/thousands-of-hotmail-passwords-reportedly-leaked-online/

 

Using Hotmail? Join the 21st century (this one's for Sonner!).

 

And this, too.

 

I think I was one of the first to get a hotmail address, September 1997. Have had the same password since. I'm not changing it now, damn it.

No one emails me there anymore but I have a bunch of old emails there I want to keep so it's still active. Although, with my devotion to Yahoo Mail, I suppose I still haven't reached the 21st century.

 

Same here (except now I'm at Gmail, so I'm finally 21st century.)

 

I'm sure you do, but remember to log in at least once every 90 days, I think it is.

 

The worst was when Hotmail had the size limit on the inbox. I had to delete a ton of ones that I wish I had now. Why didn't I print them? I don't know.

 

i still have my excite.com e-mail.

might have one for compuserve, too.

 

I've been using the same Hotmail account since '97 as well and haven't left simply because I look at it as my phone number: Why change it if you don't have to? I never wanted to have to send a "I'm changing addresses" email to everyone.

That said, now that everyone and their dog (literally) is on Facebook and uses that more than email, it's becoming easier to do. A security breach like this might be the last straw.

 

I still use Hotmail.
I've never had any reason to change. SBC and Yahoo have occassionally given me e-mail accounts, but I don't use them. They just lapse until they get closed.
I have an e-mail at work and my Hotmail account. Don't any others.

 

I changed to Gmail about two years ago, and it's not as hard as you think.

First, change the "reply-to" field on your old account to your new address.
Then, send out an e-mail -- just once -- to all your contacts with your new address.

Any company/service you get e-mail from, especially financial ones/bills, go through and change it to the new one. Any company/service you deal with every day, or every week, go through and change those.

Keep monitoring your old account for a few weeks. Any non-essential service you get e-mail from, just wait until you get the next message from them and change it as they come up.

After a month, you should be set. All your business e-mails should have cycled through by then, and most people have had enough time to change their contact settings, since it takes 2 seconds to do.

 

I've had my Hotmail account since Dec. 31, 2002, and have had Yahoo for even longer. And after about four years of having the same password, I finally just changed mine.