When Hotmail Isn't That Hot

from the ouch dept

Yet another case of identity theft, but this one is with a bit of a twist. Here's the story of a guy who had his Hotmail email address hijacked - and couldn't get it back. He lost all of the emails that he had stored - and whoever hijacked the address proceeded to forward private messages from some people in his inbox to others. The hijacker also used information he learned via the account to impersonate the guy in chat rooms and even give out his home phone number. Of course, the guy contacted Microsoft to get control of his account back, but since the hijacker had changed all of the personal info, there was no way for Microsoft to verify the guy's identity. In fact, they kept insisting it clearly wasn't him since the information he provided didn't match the stored "profile". Here's a case where "biometrics" (for all the scary talk about them) could have actually helped. If the guy could have identified himself by fingerprint or voiceprint, he could have verified that he was who he said. When the information about him can be modified just by accessing the account, then it's not very secure.