Couple of days ago a hacker got access to private e-mail box(yahoo mail id) of Sarah Palin, a Republican vice-presidential nominee for White House.
Many blogs posted the screenshots of her mail box, contacts list, personal photos and text of mail conversations. Her entire email conversations and private information available in the email account are publicly available on the Internet now.
If you wonder how the hacker got access to secured Sarah Palin’s mail id, here is the what Wired Blog says
.hack didn’t require any real skill. Instead, the hacker simply reset Palin’s password using her birth date, ZIP code and information about where she met her spouse — the security question on her Yahoo account, which was answered (Wasilla High) by a simple Google search.
The hacker is tentatively identified as a college student from Tennessee and in a post on 4chan site he wrote
..it took seriously 45 mins on wikipedia and google to find the info, Birthday? 15 seconds on wikipedia, zip code? well she had always been from wasilla, and it only has 2 zip codes (thanks online postal service!)
You can read more details of this story here.
How safe is your email? Is your password reset answer secured enough?