For public email accounts like Hotmail, Yahoo, or Gmail, below are some safety tips:
1. Always be careful of what you say when it comes to email. Think of it as a permanent record even if you delete it. Finally "it's always good to be careful in what you say, and twice so in what you write".
2. Never store any sensitive email in a public facility where security could be compromised. As a better practice, any sensitive message should be copied to your hard drive and deleted from potential public access.
3. Security questions are your MOST IMPORTANT safeguard in any web based facility where a password can be mailed back. If the 3 questions are easy to guess, any unauthorized person could gain entry (e.g., family member, friend, or criminal). When it comes to security questions, it's good to be "less forthcoming" by misspelling or using incorrect answers. As a best practice, ensure that only you know the answers to the password-reset questions.
4. Complex and difficult-to-guess passwords are mandatory for any Internet site (letters, numbers, case, etc)
5. It is a good practice to change passwords on a regular basis
6. Don't use the same password for every website or email account
7. You may also want to write down the security questions/answers in case of future account lockout issues. If you create a special file containing password or secret question information, keep it in a confidential and offline location.
How Sarah Palin's Yahoo email was Hacked
http://www.eweek.com/c/a/Security/Sarah-Palin-Hack-an-Example-of-Password-Recovery-Backfire/
http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1595343/20080922/story.jhtml
http://isc.sans.org/diary.html?storyid=5068
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/paper-trail/2008/09/22/tennessee-student-is-focus-of-palin-e-mail-hack-investigation.html
http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/21/160222
http://itmanagement.earthweb.com/secu/article.php/3772981/The+Security+Lesson+in+the+Sarah+Palin+Email+Hack.htm
http://garwarner.blogspot.com/2008/09/governor-palins-email-security.html
QUOTE: The ease with which Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin's e-mail was hacked is striking and underscores the importance of improving privacy questions for password recovery. A person claiming responsibility for the hack posted details of what he did Wednesday on a 4chan.org message board. The handle of the poster has been linked to the 20-year-old son of Tennessee Democrat Mike Kernell.
Yahoo required the user provide Palin’s birthday and zip code, which the hacker said he found through Wikipedia and Google. The final security measure required him to answer a question regarding where Palin met her spouse; another Google search turned up the answer.