Security experts are seeing an increase in spam in Hotmail, Gmail, and other Web mail accounts. Increasingly, the spam appears to be coming from people that the victims know. Researchers suspect that cybercriminals are stealing passwords and other account information through fraudulent e-mail scams and then using these new accounts to send spam to everyone in the victim’s inbox.

To help protect yourself from these scams, follow these three steps:

1.    Guard your own account information.

2.    Learn to recognize phishing scams in case the scams look like they’re coming from someone that you  know.

3.    Be careful with links in e-mail. They may direct you to spoofed Websites.

If you think your Web e-mail account has been hacked, change your password.

For additional information, see the following special report on Email Fraud:

http://resources.alibaba.com/trade_safe/email_fraud.html

Source: Security Tips&Talk Blog