In recent months the most common form of "hacking" passports has been done through what is called "phishing". This method involves the posting of a link which when clicked takes the person to what appears to be a real MSN Groups, .NET, or MSN Hotmail sign in page. The person then enters their email address and password thinking they are signing into their passport but what they are really doing is giving that information to the "Phisher" who then uses it to take over their passport, having access to their email, all of their groups, any personal information they've given, and even their credit card info if they use the MSN wallet.

They most commonly get their victims by offering something that sounds too good to be true. It sounds like that because IT IS.

You can protect yourself from this simply by paying attention. When you're already signed into your passport and you get a sign in page, BE SUSPICIOUS! When you click a link provided by someone other than MSN and end up on a sign-in page - BE SUSPICIOUS! Don’t enter ANY INFORMATION. Never sign into your passport on a page that you got to from anywhere other than a link you use all the time.

Instead go to your group from a link you know to be valid and see if it shows your name at the top where it normally shows as member/manager/assistant manager. If it does, you don’t need to sign in and you most likely just protected your passport.

Every day I go to a link to my group that is in my favorites and click the sign in button from there. That way I KNOW I’m getting a legitimate sign-in page.

These scams are becoming very popular now and are very effective because people are falling for it. The only way to protect yourself is to PAY ATTENTION to where you enter your information.

The second most popular scam is people asking you to make them a manager of your group. most often claiming they are from MSN. MSN does not need to be made a manager of your group to do anything. Some will offer to make a page or fix one if you make them a manager. NEVER make anyone a manager of your group that you don’t know. No matter how convincing they may sound about having to be made manager. If they offer to fix a page, copy the page into a message and let them fix it by posting the fix into a message. They don’t need to be manager or assistant to do that.

There are bad people out there. They thrive on making your life miserable and destroying your hard work. Don’t give them the thrill. If you don’t know for sure it’s legitimate, go to http://groups.msn.com/browse.msnw?catid=16 where you will find a whole list of help groups. Go to any one of them and ask.