free sbc email hacked and locked?

For anybody interesting' I'v just found that nice site that will evaluate the strenght of your passwords:

https://passfault.appspot.com/password_strength.html#menu

You type in a password, click the "Analyze" button and you get a "Time To Crack" value. Large is good.
You want at least a few months, if you have a result in years or centuries, you are prety good.

Electro
May 2012

To have your account cracked, your password was very probably rahter weak. 10 years ago, it was not a big deal, but it's now.

The only option you still have now is to request a password reset.
If you have a secret question, just hope that it was'nt changed and use it.
If you have a still valid alternative e-mail address, check if you can have a password reset e-mail sent at that address.
You may try to hack it back hopping that the new password is a weak or bad one.

If that don't work, then, I'm very sory for you, but you no longer own that account :(

Your only option left is to create a new account and inform all your contacts of the change. Tell them to ignore ANY and ALL messages from your old account.

For the new password, do a search for "most common password" and "worst passwords". If you find the password you want on those lists, DON'T EVER use it.
DON'T use any pet name.
DON'T use the name of any person you know.
DON'T use any word that you can find in ANY dictionary.
Don't use simple character substitution like changing e to 3, a to 4, s to $ and such, there ARE dictionaries available containing all possible substitutions and hackers do use them.

Make it AT LEAST 10 characters long.
Use UPPER and lower case leters, numbers and special characters.
Inserting a space inthe password can be very effective.

EVEN if you manage to retreive your old account, it's very advisable to still create a new account on another provider.

Electro
May 2012