My friend’s Yahoo email password got stolen and her account was used to send spam emails. Cases like this seem to be increasing as you’ll find lots of hits on Google if you search for “stolen password.”

She didn’t know how her password got stolen. She only found that out because one of her friends had informed her about the spam email. When she checked the sent mail box, she saw the spam email she never sent. So, it means that somebody stole her password and used her account, rather than faking the email address.

I immediately asked her to change the password. She was lucky that the person who used her account didn’t change the password. If that was the case, she could’ve locked out of her email account.

I also asked her to check the detailed header of the spam email, and it turned out that the email was originating from China. (You can see the full header by clicking on “Full Headers” at the bottom of the mail in Classic Mail or at the upper-right part in the new Yahoo Mail.)

Her case was a good lesson for me. Changing passwords regularly and using complex passwords are easy ways to ensure more security but I wasn’t doing it as often as I should have been. From now on, I’ll be more careful about passwords.