Well it happened to me and I apparently sent emails all over the world requesting friends, family and business contacts to purchase Viagra! Maybe some did..... I have switched from Yahoo to Gmail having been advised it was a bit more secure, but am using 2 step verification which is a service from Gmail which gives you a unique code by phone each month so that this cannot now happen (we shall see). As I had not heard of this code verification, thought I would pass this on to anyone who is now paranoid like me!

Same happened to me about a month ago BB and my inbox was cleared out completely

I've had several friends who used Hotmail whose accounts were hacked like that as well, so it's not just Yahoo.

Best advice I can give is to have a strong password (which includes capital and lower case letters, numbers, and even maybe some special characters) and frequently run anti-virus checks.

Hotmail is not the most secure. Yahoo used to be really bad which is why several sites, including this one I think, didn't allow them. Strong passwords, and also unusual usernames, on the accounts are a good idea. Many hackers have systems that generate usernames by the thousands every minute, one of them will almost always hit someone.

One thing I like about Gmail is you can view the IP of anyone that logs into the account. Makes it easy to verify if someone has been in your account. At the bottom it says "Last account activity" and gives a time and date and IP. If you click on the "Details" link after the time and date it gives you the last 10 logins and IP addresses. You can also ask them to notify you of unusual activity on the account.

They did have an issue a while back, where one of their servers go compromised. I had an issue with one of my accounts. They shut the account down because it had attempted to send 10 "SPAM-like" emails. I had to give them a phone number to verify my identity and the reopened my account...with nothing deleted or missing. Updated my password (which was strong in the first place) and haven't had an issue since.

I am pleased with Gmail and it has several features which are better than Yahoo, apart from security. I am hoping the 2 step verification will be an end to any problems in that direction. Many thanks for your replies.