Following on from the initial report that Hotmail accounts have been “phished” and posted online – it appears that 20,000 more e-mail addresses have also been posted, including GMail, Yahoo and AOL. There are some that are fake, or indeed expired, but there are still some that are valid and being used.

It may not be the same phishing attack, although it is important to note that phishing is still a problem in the industry.

What is phishing?

There are various methods of phishing, but normally it occurs when a user recieve an e-mail, probably claiming to be from a website or e-mail provider, asking you to update your account details by clicking on a link which takes the user to a fake site where the user is asked to submit log in details. If the user proceeds and submits log in details, the owner of the fake site has just acquired the users log in details to use as he wishes. Sometimes, a click on that link is all that is needed for the “phisher” to acquire log in details.

Users must be aware that any such e-mail coming through must be ignored – companies very rarely, if at all, ask users for their login details. if you ever suspect a phishing e-mail, simply ignore and delete. If in doubt, speak to the company who the e-mail claims to be from.

Phishing does not always aim for e-mail accounts – bank accounts and Paypal accounts are also sought after by phishing scams. Again, any e-mail asking for bank account details should be ignored in any case.

It has been reported that a list of Hotmail accounts had been acquired and published online on the 1st October. See the article on the BBC News website here.

The list contained 10,000 hotmail accounts beginning with A and B, and ending with hotmail.com, live.com and msn.com. The addresses have mainly come from Europe.

Iit seems that the addresses have been acquired by “phishing”, gaining usernames and passwords by tricking users into giving their details on false sites so it may not be considered as a Hotmail security breach. Still, users have to remain vigilant – phishing e-mails can ask you to click on a link and input your account details. These links tend to be false sites, tricking users to submit their details to whoever is running these sites. Be sure that companies should never ask for your log on details via an e-mail. If you’re ever unsure of e-mails asking for your details, ignore them and contact the company these e-mails are ‘claiming’ to be from.

The list has since been removed and Microsoft have launched an investigation into how these addresses were acquired. It has been recommended that Hotmail users with e-mail accounts starting with A or B should change their password. If you use your Hotmail password with any other website and you use the same password, it is highly recommended you change these passwords too.

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Microsoft has started to offer an ultra lightweight version of its popular office suite as a web based solution, in preparation for the Office 2010 release. Find more information about that at workspace.officelive.com.

It has emerged that not all browsers are going to be fully compatible. As The Register reports, Chrome and Opera are the browsers in question, as well as Apples Safari. It has also been reported that neither is Internet Explorer 6, an older version of Microsofts own web browser! Firefox 3.5 will apparently be supported.

It is no surprise that Chrome or Opera may not be compatible as these are non-Microsoft products, although what is interesting to point out is that Internet Explorer 6 also may not be compatible. this highlights the point that as new web based technologies emerge, it is important to keep your browser editions up to date with the latest versions – not only from a compatibility point of view but also from a security aspect.

There are some exceptions – one example would be if a specific web application has been written for a certain version of browser. In this case, speak to the developers of the product to check the browser compatibility of the web application.

In this specific case, it has been suggested to try your preferred browser as it may work and if not, make sure you have Internet Explorer 8 installed, even if it is just to access Office Web and use your favourite browser for everything else.

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If you are wanting to send a document to someone, you may want to send it as a PDF (Portable Document Format). There is no native option in Office 2007 that allows you to save your document as a PDF, although there is an add-on available.

1. Visit http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=4d951911-3e7e-4ae6-b059-a2e79ed87041&displaylang=en
2. Download the add-on
3. Click “Run” when prompted
4. Leave the installation to run until “Installation Completed” appears.

Once the installation is completed, open Word or Excel and click on the Office button (top left hand corner), hover your cursor over “Save As…” and click on “Save as PDF or XPS”. Now you should be able to save your document in PDF format, ready for sending.

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In Microsoft Office Word 2007, you can brand a document with a watermark. This can be “Draft”, “Copy” or even a picture of your own choice. Sometimes you may want to just add a watermakr to certain pages. In my scenario, I wanted to add a watermark to all of the pages in my document except the first page.

I found the Office tutorial fairly useful – http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/word/HA100970321033.aspx#4, which identifies certain scenarios where you may want to use a watermark.

What is interesting to point out is that watermarks are placed in the “Header” (Insert -> Header).  In my scenario, I simply went to Insert -> Header. This took me into “Header and Footer edit mode”. In this mode, i clicked on the watermark on my first page and hit the delete key. This deleted the watermark, leaving the watermark on all of the other pages.

There are some other handy Microsoft office “How to…” items on the Office website http://office.microsoft.com/en-gb/word/FX100649251033.aspx?CTT=96&Origin=CL100636481033.

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