You should just mail them directly and tell them to change their password. That should solve all of the problems. As far as hacking GW, I doubt it. How most people phishing for passwords is by making a site that looks just like a site you intend to go to. So, you may type I the address bar: www.yahooo.com, simply an extra o. It could look just like regular yahoo, but when YouTube your user name and password in, they collect it and then sell it off to illegal pharmacies so that they can I turn spam other users. Sometimes it is even simpler to steal your username and password. Say for example you see an advertisement for a free computer or car or whatever and you click on it, or perhaps a contest for the advertised item. It may even be a complete an offer and get this prize type of situation. Anyway, no matter they way, they make you create an account on their website. So you create your username, a password, all your info etc. Well, research has proven that most people use the same username and password for almost all of their accounts, so if they have one, the. Chances are, they can figure them all out. Best thing to do is to make sure your password is difficult, at least 1 captitol letter and a number. Also, always check your address bar to make sure you typed correctly, or better yet, always use google to get to an address, as google won't let you go to a known spamming site. And the biggest thing you can do to protect your accounts and computers.....never click on attachments in a forwarded email. As a matter of fact, don't even open them..they may look innocent, but trust me, they are installing spyware I the background while you watch yet another video of a baby laughing or are looking at pictures, or what have you.

SPAM

It is one reason if I know I am on an open un-secure wifi network I will never log into my email account or other sensitive accounts, but truthfully I have only been on an un-secure wifi 2 times. At home our wifi should be secure if set up properly in the router. One of the other email accounts I use gmx.com does have the option to use https all the way through. surprisingly I have found many sites do support it but you have to actually go to the url and type in the https replacing the http and if it supports it, it will change to green, give it a try on a few sites to see if it works. It definitely should be much more available and should be the standard protocol but when that will happen is anyones guess. That leaves us to try to be smart users and smart surfers and do what we can to protect ourselves.

Sorry, Siobhan -- I just saw that you have a note about this in the bookmark exchange thread. I should have checked there before posting.