Video: Paris Hilton & Sarah Palin - what's the connection?

Filed Under: Data loss, Law & order, Video

The story about Sarah Palin's Yahoo email account being hacked is making headlines around the world, and bloggers are arguing back-and-forth about the rights and wrongs of breaking into her account.

What's perhaps most relevant to all of us, however, is how did the hackers manage to breach security and gain access to what should have been a secure email account, and what can the ordinary man or woman in the street do to prevent it happening to them?

After all, if it can happen to Sarah Palin it could - if we're not careful - potentially happen to you, me, or even celebrities like Paris Hilton...

(Enjoy this video? You can check out more on the SophosLabs YouTube channel and subscribe if you like)

By the way, feel free to embed the video on your own website if you like, just click on the embed icon on the player.

Hopefully the video will give some people a few tips as to how to better look after their web email account.

Of course, Sarah Palin isn't the only person in the race to the White House who has caught the eye of hackers. Last week I blogged about the fake Barack Obama Sex Movie that cybercriminals used as a lure to infect innocent computer users.

Oh, and the guys who look after our website say I owe them a few drinks after what they expect I'm going to do to the servers by mentioning "Paris Hilton" and "video" on the same webpage.

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About the author

Graham Cluley is senior technology consultant at Sophos. The readers of Computer Weekly voted him security blogger of the year in 2009 and 2010, and he pipped Stephen Fry to the title of "Twitter user of the year" too. Which was nice. He was also named "Best Security Blogger" by the readers of SC Magazine in 2011. You can subscribe to Graham's updates on Facebook, follow him on Twitter and circle him on Google Plus for regular updates.