Hotmail, Google accounts breached

ACCOUNTS on email systems operated by Hotmail and Google have been compromised into a major industry-wide scam which could affect tens of thousands of users.

Using fake websites, hackers conned people into revealing data such as bank account details or login names and passwords.

The breach was thought to target just Hotmail users, but yesterday a second list of 20,000 names emerged containing email addresses and passwords from Hotmail, Yahoo, AOL, Gmail and other service providers.