Email Security

Bosh

Recently had PWS:Win32/Zbot password stealer detected on my PC.

MSE caught it straight away, but I changed all my passwords anyway.

The only one I couldn't change was for my Diginet email, which I use as my primary email. There's no facility on their webmail page to do so.

I contacted them & reply (which was very prompt, I must add) was that I could do it over the phone or email them back with a new password & they would do it for me.

This got me thinking about just how secure are email passwords. Can tech support in Google, for example, view all Gmail passwords? Or are some providers more secure than others?

Bosh

Bosh wrote: »

Recently had PWS:Win32/Zbot password stealer detected on my PC.

MSE caught it straight away, but I changed all my passwords anyway.

The only one I couldn't change was for my Diginet email, which I use as my primary email. There's no facility on their webmail page to do so.

I contacted them & reply (which was very prompt, I must add) was that I could do it over the phone or email them back with a new password & they would do it for me.

This got me thinking about just how secure are email passwords. Can tech support in Google, for example, view all Gmail passwords? Or are some providers more secure than others?

Depends on how they are stored on the server. Generally, they're encrypted using something like SHA (or one of it variations). This is a one way algorithm which is very difficult to reverse. So no, they don't have access to see you password.

If your ever using a site and use the "Forgotten Password" link, and they are able to send you your password in plain text format, then they aren't encrypting their passwords, and you should seriously consider changing password to something meaningless and stop using the site.

Bosh

Hmmm, interesting.

Obviously if I ring or email Diginet whomever I speak with will know my password, which obviously is far from ideal.

Have been toying with the idea recently of switching over completely to Gmail, but was put off by the botheration

But common sense should be the decider :P

GarIT

Pretty much all email accounts are extremely unsecure other than the big 3, google, Microsoft, yahoo. I wouldn't use an email address from a broadband provider if you piad me to.

Google reads all your emails though to decide what ads to show you, and keeps a record of your emails even after you get rid of them.

Bosh

So if I were intent on world domination eircom.net is not the way to go so!