How did they hack into his email?

Question

Somebody hacked into my boyfriends email address and 'dumped' me. Me and my boyfriend sorted it out but I wanna know how somebody could have done this without his password?

(It's obviously someone that we know)

Answer 1

Unfortunately you don't need to hack into someone's email address to make it look as though the message was sent from that address, you just need to use that address to create an account on OE/WLM & unless you check the headers it'll look as though it's come from your bf email address.

Answer 2

Maybe someone was looking over his shoulder when he typed his PW.  Or maybe someone installed a keystroke logger on the PC or laptop that he uses and got it that way?  Lots of ways to steal passwords m'dear.  Watch your back!

Answer 3

Assuming that he didn't have a password that was easy to guess (eg, your name, etc), there are a number of ways that people could have hacked his account - has he checked his computer for viruses, some trojan horse viruses will monitor usernames and passwords.  Otherwise, has he used his e-mail on any other computers apart from his own - one of these may have been compromised.  Or if you are both at school, has he used a proxy server, to bypass the school's security, to access myspace, etc, along with his e-mail, if so then he is just asking to get his account hacked.

You can also look at the e-mail sent to you to see whether it looks like it's been sent by someone who knows you, or whether it's just a prank by some kid who's randomly managed to hack his account?  you _may_ be able to contact the e-mail provider and get records of which IP address sent that e-mail and track it down like that, but you may need local law enforcement help to extract a username from an ip address at an ISP