Outsource that Email Hack

Dancho Danchev has blogged repeatedly about the commercilization of badware producers, and this week he mentioned another example: outsourced email hacking. The hackers-for-hire promise that their seven-step process, from submitting the information of the would-be victim to proof of execution and exchange of money, will be cleaner and yield better results than other methods (phishing, viruses, etc).

Danchev ponders:
bq. Too good to be true, but since they only charge after they provide you with a proof that they did the job, they could be in fact attempting to hack these emails, compared to the majority of cases where scammers scam the scammers.

But, how would you do business with people who make it their business to gain access without detection? Some email providers have stepped forward with more privacy features, for example Gmail has added a details feature allowing users to view their account history which logs time and IP addresses for recent access.

Another feature that I like: remote log-out, which should come in handy after logging into an account from a different machine, though it could become a hassle if your email is being controlled by a third party who decides to deny you access to your own email account.