Are E Mails secure?

Discussion in 'Computer Science & Culture' started by lucifers angel, Sep 18, 2008.

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  1. lucifers angel same shit, differant day!! Registered Senior Member

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    I would never do this to anyone, i was wondering, this:

    Are E mails 100% secure? how would someone go about getting into anouther persons e mail account without knowing the password or secret answer?

    so are e mails really has secure has we are led to think??
     
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  3. Read-Only Valued Senior Member

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    I've no idea how secure you've 'been lead to think' but they aren't secure at all. The only way to make them so is to use encryption - GOOD encryption.
     
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  5. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    You can try and guess the password. I think that's what happened to Palin.
     
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  7. Betrayer0fHope MY COHERENCE! IT'S GOING AWAYY Registered Senior Member

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    It's VERY easy to obtain the password of someone's email of whom you know. Let's say it's my school teacher, and I ask him to go to my webpage(some how I convince him, it isn't too hard). A little bit of PHP coding emails that person with the address of whatever the hell you want it to be, although I'm not sure if you can email from a .gov. Anyways, you can probably email them and it might be from a Yahoo! Administrator and demand they email their password back, make them click on a link which gives them a keylogger, or keylog the original site. You can't really "hack" into someone else's email, from my understanding, but you can always bruteforce it, which is having a program send requests to the site asking if the password is a or aa or aaa and so on.
     
  8. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    Every Email that you send or recieve is copied by whoever your Email provider is. They hold onto your records for over a year and those records can be seen by anyone who wants to view them , legally speaking that is.
     
  9. S.A.M. uniquely dreadful Valued Senior Member

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    Keystroke logging is one way to get someone else's password. But you need access to their computer.

    http://www.webwatchernow.com/Monito...c=1815615306&gclid=COuqqfCe5pUCFQeWGgodylgReQ
     
  10. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

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    Also, if the web mail is used on your own computer, you can recover the password used.

    Regarding Palin:

    Details of this week's break-in, if authentic, were consistent with speculation by computer security experts who said Yahoo's "forgot-my-password" service almost certainly was exploited. The mechanism allows customers to retrieve or change their password if they can verify their identity by confirming personal information such as birthdate, zip code and the answer to a "secret question," such as a childhood pet's name or school mascot.​
     
  11. Syzygys As a mother, I am telling you Valued Senior Member

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    In electronics there is no such a thing as 100% secure, so the answer is no...
     
  12. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    The thing is with Politicians they lead very public lives, this means pretty much all their information can be retrieved far easier than just an average citizen. I would suggest this is what occurred in this particular cases, all that can be said is don't use Words in passwords, use both capital and lower case where you can, numbers and also symbols. Sometimes you can even get away with using ASCII, although for the most part forms on the internet tend to react weird with ASCII input unless you've Copy/Pasted it in.
     
  13. Dr Mabuse Percipient Thaumaturgist Registered Senior Member

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    That is indeed how he cracked her account. He knew her birthdate and zip code, and guessed "Wasilla High" as the response to 'What high school did you attend?'. He was in.
     
  14. Avatar smoking revolver Valued Senior Member

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    These "secret questions" have always shocked me. If you now a little about the person, they can be broken in with no prob. That's why I always invent my own imaginary answers to these questions, whenever I'm asked.
     
  15. Betrayer0fHope MY COHERENCE! IT'S GOING AWAYY Registered Senior Member

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    Where did you meet your first spouse?

    Hell
     
  16. Stryder Keeper of "good" ideas. Valued Senior Member

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    You should probably write that H31L, or h3|i, or |-|e\_\_ etc
     
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