How to protect your Instant Messenger account from being hacked..?

The new trend of new hackers is to screw your hotmail or MSN account.. It's really frustrating when they get your email and connect to Instant Messenger and start to mess with your friends. Create fights and your whole life could turn into a nightmare. It happened to a friend of mine. One day I opened my IM and started a conversation with her. I noticed a huge change in her language! Filthy mouth, aggression!! I figured out that her account was hacked and used by somebody else who just wanted to make her life harder. I blocked it and called my friend to figure how can we fix the problem. We couldn't get the account back.. but we learned a lesson about how to secure our hotmail accounts.

How can they hack my account ?
It's very simple and stupid. The hacker get to the hotmail and claims that he forgot the password and answer the stupid questions asked to get the password back. These questions are stupid because they're very easy to guess the answer. "What is your mother's birth place" Imagine that!! If you're a Californian there is a 80% chance that your mother's Californian too. Most people pick the easiest question because they're in a rush but they didn't know that they maid a bad choice !


How to protect my IM account from being hacked ?
First of all make a strong password : a long one with different characters and punctuation marks. Make it meaningful just for you. Let's have an example. Pick your best car name or pet and break it into syllables and write every syllable with a number:
my1best2car3name4
Then break the syllables with other characters like "; : | (" the result will be like : my1;best2:car3!name4(
This will make a good password. Don't give to anybody, don't save it down on your computer and never write it down !

Second, Never use these stupid questions to get your password . Use alternate email address , once you forget the password they'll email for you and make sure both email accounts are secure!!