Trend Micro’s Report alerts Indian Internet Users

Trend Micro has recently released a report that exposes the presence of 25,000 Indian email addresses and passwords on different hacker forums. The report states that these 25,000 Indian email ids and passwords are a mix of email ids and passwords from sites like yahoo, gmail, sify, different webmail addresses and a number of corporate email addresses as well. As per Trend Micro researchers, the nature of the list indicates that the email providers themselves were not hacked, but third-party websites on which these users were registered were compromised.

“This is similar to the cases of the ChristianSingles and Faithwriters websites in the USA last year, where a security issue with those websites allowed hackers to gain access to the complete user list and passwords for those websites. Internet users commonly register with dozens of websites and for convenience they typically use the same email addresses and passwords on each one of them. Many of these websites have adequate security measures in place, but those who do have adequate security mechanism, are putting their subscribers at a serious risk. Unfortunately, it is nearly impossible for a typical Internet user to assess the vulnerability risk level of such websites without some form of third-party accreditation system in place,” commented David Peterson, Consumer Products Director, Australia and New Zealand, Trend Micro. 

That is why Trend Micro suggests that it is ideal for the Internet users to use different passwords for each website that they sign up to. That will help them to limit their risk in the case of any event such as ChristianSingles and Faithwriters website hackings. However, it is an extremely tough task to remember so many different sets of account details. To protect the users from such attacks and to minimize the damage, Trend Micro recommends that Internet users should not reuse their usernames and passwords between the different websites that they subscribe to. It also mentions that companies should have clear policies for their employees that they must not reuse their work-related passwords on other non-work websites.