How to prevent people hacking into your hotmail../?

-I just got my account back. It had been blocked because I had been sending a lot of junk mail, even though it wasn't me who sent them. They were from foreign countrys. They sent it to people who are not my contacts.



How did they hack into my account and also how do I prevent it happening again?Well first off change your password.When signed into hotmail click options in the top right hand corner and select more options the click on both "Email forwarding" and "Sending automated vacation replies" and make sure there is no other email address that your mail is being forwarded to.



Also download malwarebytes and scan your computer with it.(It's free)

http://www.malwarebytes.org/ And again lastly use a strong password and don't open or reply to any junk mail.This is a common problem. Often times, webmail accounts get hacked because people use the same passwords for almost everything they do on the Internet; or there is enough information available for people to accurately guess the answer to your challenge questions in order to have the sites reset your password after clicking the "Forgot password" like.



You can prevent that from happening by using an application like Keepass to store all of your passwords, and then make sure your passwords are fairly strong and that you don't use them for other sites. The second thing you can do is to create fake answers to the challenge questions. Something like, "Where did you graduate high school?" Your answer: Joe F. Mama HS. It needs to be something you'll remember. You could even write it down and stick it to your monitor since other people would just think you were being funny. That way, when your personal information leaks out on the Internet (and it inevitably will), it can't be used against you in that fashion.



Of course, some of these security breaches are due to less than stellar security on the part of the webmail sites themselves. Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do about those.



Update: Hotmail announced today that they are banning weak passwords (stuff like: password, qwerty, 123456, iloveyou, etc). This is the sort of thing I was referring to when I mentioned less than stellar security on the part of the providers.
How can you're account have been compromised?



1) Password might have been way too weak and easy to guess you should always have a very strong password mixed case 20-48 characters and changed every few weeks:



https://secure.pctools.com/guides/passwo鈥?/a>



2) Password got sniffed



3) Password was written down and someone found it



4) The Attacker had a key logger installed on you're computer and found it that way (key logger monitors you're key strokes)



5) Phishing fake hotmail site that tricks you into typing you're login name and details



6) You were infected with spyware scan you're computer
Run frequent scans on your computer and delete your Computer's Cookies very often. You can also download:

SPY BOT S&D: http://www.safer-networking.org/en/index鈥?/a>



And run the immunizer. It will protect your internet browser from hackers and viruses.



You can also contact the Email company and ask them about ways to protect your email further. Try not to open emails from things you did not sign up for and don't open attatchments without scanning them with an Anti virus.