Email hacking

Email hacking is the unauthorized access to, or manipulation of, an email account or email correspondence.

Email is a widely used communication mechanism that can be categorized into two basic types of web-based service: open and closed. Open web-based services provide email accounts to anyone, either for free or for a fee. Closed web-based services are managed by organizations who provide email accounts only to their members. Email is used by commercial and social websites because of its security. Email is an increasingly common tool used to communicate. The main reason email accounts are hacked is to access the personal, sensitive, or confidential information that they might contain. This is very harmful for the user and could cause damage to profiles on certain websites, bank accounts, and personal life.

There are a number of ways in which a hacker can illegally gain access to an email account, and the majority of them rely on the behavior of the account's user.

Spam is created by attackers who send unsolicited commercial or bulk email. Spammers continuously attempt to find new ways around the increased legislation and policies governing unsolicited emails. Attackers often send massive email broadcasts with a hidden or misleading incoming IP address and a hidden or misleading email address. If the spammers were to gain access to a company’s email and IP address, the impact on the company's business could be devastating. The company’s Internet connection would be terminated by its Internet Service Provider (ISP) if its email and IP address are added to the blacklist of known spamming addresses. Effectively, this would shut down the company’s online business because none of the emails would reach their destination.

A virus incorporates email as a means of transportation. This type of virus is often called a worm - the Sobig virus is an example. This virus creates a spamming framework by taking over unwilling participants’ PCs. This is a major threat to email security because the spam will continue to spread, triggering dangerous viruses with malicious intent.

See ransomware.

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