If you've been following my blog, you know that I've been intrigued lately by the notion of hacking my own email account.
I know it can be done by someone who really wants to do it---that's not the issue.
The issue is suppose someone I know: a friend, a not-so-friend, a neighbor thought it would be fun to try to guess my email password.
Surely my mail provider would let me know?
Or not?
It's been a few weeks since I last tried to hack my own Yahoo email account.
I was unsuccessful, but most importantly, once I successfully logged into Yahoo, Yahoo never once told me about the suspicious activity against my Yahoo account.
I guess Yahoo doesn't consider hundreds of attempts to guess my account password significant.
Perhaps this happens all the time?
I figured I would try one of my Google accounts---surely Google would be a bit more vigilant.
Well, my first attempts went this way---
Try to log into my Google account with a valid user id, but successively provide the letters 'a' through 'z; as password.
As was the case with Yahoo, all I received was a message indicating that my password was incorrect.
25 additional attempts with a bad password produced the same result.
When I logged in successfully, I anticipated that I might have an email in my Google email account indicating suspicious activity on my account.
I didn't.
My next attempt will be a bit more persistent---1000 attempts with a bad password.
Interestingly, this Google account I'm trying to hack is an account that I hadn't used in a while.
When I used it last week, Google prompted me for an alternate email address in the event my account became disabled or locked out.
So it does happen--but apparently not for 26 bad password entries.
More to follow :)
I know it can be done by someone who really wants to do it---that's not the issue.
The issue is suppose someone I know: a friend, a not-so-friend, a neighbor thought it would be fun to try to guess my email password.
Surely my mail provider would let me know?
Or not?
It's been a few weeks since I last tried to hack my own Yahoo email account.
I was unsuccessful, but most importantly, once I successfully logged into Yahoo, Yahoo never once told me about the suspicious activity against my Yahoo account.
I guess Yahoo doesn't consider hundreds of attempts to guess my account password significant.
Perhaps this happens all the time?
I figured I would try one of my Google accounts---surely Google would be a bit more vigilant.
Well, my first attempts went this way---
Try to log into my Google account with a valid user id, but successively provide the letters 'a' through 'z; as password.
As was the case with Yahoo, all I received was a message indicating that my password was incorrect.
25 additional attempts with a bad password produced the same result.
When I logged in successfully, I anticipated that I might have an email in my Google email account indicating suspicious activity on my account.
I didn't.
My next attempt will be a bit more persistent---1000 attempts with a bad password.
Interestingly, this Google account I'm trying to hack is an account that I hadn't used in a while.
When I used it last week, Google prompted me for an alternate email address in the event my account became disabled or locked out.
So it does happen--but apparently not for 26 bad password entries.
More to follow :)
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