Why do people get their hotmail accounts cracked? Because they're stupid!

Why do people fall victim to internet fraudsters?

Because they're stupid, that's why.

It's one thing clicking on a very convincing email from your bank or building society. I can understand why people might fall for that.

But the recent revelation that passwords for more than 10,000 Hotmail accounts have been stolen and then posted online revealed something else too.

Incredibly the most popular hotmail account password was 12345. Some people went for engima machine-style complexity though. Yes, they drastically upped the number of symbols to 1234567 and even in some extreme cases 12345678!

It's a good job the Germans didn't have such codemasters otherwise Bletchley Park would never have broken their transmissions!

Just one more of the top ten passwords worth passing on - 111111.

A Microsoft spokesman said: "We are aware that some Windows Live Hotmail customers' credentials were acquired illegally by a phishing scheme and exposed on a website.
"Upon learning of the issue, we immediately requested that the credentials be removed and launched an investigation.

"As part of that investigation, we determined that this is not a breach of any Microsoft servers.
"Subsequently, we are taking measures to block access to all of the accounts that were exposed and have resources in place to help those users reclaim their accounts."

Sadly for Microsoft, raising the iq of their users is beyond their capabilities.