Staff writer, with CNAThe best way to protect information in personal e-mails from “spambots,” which harvest e-mail addresses to build lists for unsolicited e-mails, is to change passwords regularly, an anti-virus software company consultant said yesterday. “Another step would be to enable a two-step verification feature for added security,” Trend Micro senior consultant and online security software developer Chien Sheng-tsai (簡勝財) said. Chien’s comment came following the discovery that a spambot called Onliner possessed more than 711 million e-mail accounts to which it sent spam messages. Users of social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, should pay attention to the threat of security breaches by Onliner, as their networking platforms often require users to sign in with their e-mail accounts, Chien said. The other potential threat is that users tend to sign in using the same e-mail and password for multiple social media accounts, which increases the threat to their personal information, as one hacked account could compromise the others, he said.

Source: Taipei Times August 31, 2017 15:56 UTC