Has anyone on here got a hotmail account? if so are you being asked to change your passwords because i am! Just seems a bit odd.

 

er.. no .. by who ?

 

Yes i have and yes i was asked, supposivley they are forcing everyone to change there passwords after the sony hack included user names and passwords for email address's and to stop a breach of there security.

 

I know, i tryed it and it wouldn't accept my change, thought it mite have been dodgy but now you mentioned sony it could be right.

 

if in doubt open a completely new browser window and type live.com or whatever, login and change your password

what do you mean tried and it wouldnt accept your change?
didnt ask for CC info did it ?

 

The problem is that most people use the same password for every account on the net. Hence if one site gets compromised as in the Sony case then the passwords for lots of other sites become compromised by default. As Hotmail is an obvious target they are making sure your accounts are safe by forcing you into a password change. A good idea if you ask me although anyone who uses the same password on different sites wants their head examining anyway.

 

A good piece of free software to use is Password Corral:

http://download.cnet.com/Password-Co...-10165333.html

Keeps your account passwords in an encrypted format, so you need only remember one to get to the rest.

I'll keep this in NSR for now as it is generally relevant given the circumstances.

 

a very simple way is a simple innocuously named txt file containing password/usernames, then zipped with encryption

but the golden rule is have your main email account unique from any other website

 

Hi, i typed in a new password and pressed submit and then just reloaded the same page asking me to change my password! Im not billiant on computers anyway so it stumped me a bit. i try again c wat happens. Cheers everyone for letting me know.

 

Right, changed password on hotmail and logged in now with new pw. Everything seems ok but they recommend you change your pw every 72 days.

 

Not sure if Password Corral is cross platform, but 1Password certainly is. Very handy software indeed.

 

Forget password repository programs , you don't need them. Come up with a system for usernames and passwords and you will never need anything more than your brain.

 

certainly not for Linux