email security - emails read by other people

[boosted ls1]

CraigAlsop said:

boosted ls1 said: Craig, that's a bit worrying. My pc is at home, I use NTL for my email. So, could anybody else log on to NTL and find me/my email by pretending to be me or some other method? If so how would I know about it or check it? I wouldn't worry too much in your case - to be able to sniff the data, then they would need to be already on the network *between* you & the server. So an NTL employee could probably do this, for example, but an outsider would have to hack into NTL's network first. Nothing's impossible, but this is fairly low on the scale of risk. Do you dial up, or do you have broadband? If you have broadband, then make sure you have some firewall SW like zonealarm to stop people trying to hack you.

Thanks Craig, I use dial up and have Norton Security 2003 installed. Take it I'm not so at risk after all?

[CraigAlsop]

boosted ls1 said:

Thanks Craig, I use dial up and have Norton Security 2003 installed. Take it I'm not so at risk after all?

You should be fine so long as you update the virus checker regularly. On Dialup you're more at risk from Virus/Trojan horses than sniffers that detect your password over the network.
As Marshy says, any sensible company ought to be using switched networks everywhere, however there's a lot of companies out there that still have hubs in places (even major ISPs like NTL, BT, Virgin-net etc - how do I know? - cos I've worked on their email systems)
It's generally far easier to guess people's passwords, or as Mark.S says, read it from a Post-it note.