Journalists are now targets of the online crooks

VIP LOUNGE

CLOUD LOGIN

You are here: News > News > Journalists are now targets of the online crooks

» IT Security NEWS

» 02 April 2010

Journalists are now targets of the online crooks

As said by the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of China (FCCC), journalists became the latest targets of the online criminals. This was proven as Yahoo! webmail accounts of the members of FCCC were accessed and corrupted by the unknown thugs.

It was relayed by a group of media men in Beijing that the webmail accounts of eight journalists were accessed. One correspondent, whose webmail setting included a forwarding address, was hacked by a web thief as well.

Questions remain unanswered until today

In response to this threatening case, the press association talked to the management of Yahoo!, which is based at UK. However, there was still no reply from the said web company. Yahoo! did not respond to the calls directed by the FCCC in order to clarify this situation. There was no answer to FCCC’s concern since the time they confided this issue to the web company. Yahoo has not yet explained to the concerned online users how the hackers were able to access their webmail accounts.

Stated on FCCC’s statement on their website, everyone’s aware that password security and malwares are still the major problems in the internet community as of today. But then, there is still the doubt if this hacking issue is related to the crisis previously stated.

Various security methods may be utilized

FCCC suggests that online users should be extra cautious when handling their web mail accounts. In addition to this, the users must also be vigilant when using their Yahoo! Mail accounts especially if it contains important documents. This is the least that they can do in the absence of an explanation from the web company involved.

Another way to secure the webmail accounts is to change the account passwords regularly. It is also helpful, according to FCCC, if users would check their webmail account settings if there is an installed forwarding addresses.

Internet community in China was found to be in danger

Accounts appear to be unsafe in China, according to the organization’s statement. Also, they believe that using other methods when arranging interviews and conducting confidential businesses should be used in order to ensure safety.

Based on the previous reports, this is not the first case of webmail hacking that occurred in China. Also, one of the web companies, Google, had a similar issue in January when some of the users’ Gmail accounts were illegally accessed.

To know more about us, browse though the following SecPoint links: SecPoint Products, SecPoint Awards, and SecPoint News.