DATA PROTECTION: E-MAIL SECURITY IN QUESTION.

"Microsoft has committed a grave error", points out Francois Lorho, a specialist Internet consultant based in the UK. However, "no service provider is impregnable', he warns. Web professionals have been relatively unsurprised" at the ease at which hackers managed to penetrate the Hotmail server, thanks to an apparent weakness in the security mechanism, before being able to gain access to the personal mailboxes of tens of millions of its clients. Microsoft had briefly to suspend its service, spreading confusion among its clients. Its terse announcement that the problem had been solved was only half convincing.Without pointing the finger directly the company run by Bill Gates, the National Criminal Intelligence Service (NCIS) (a British police organisation responsible most notably for investigating IT fraud), claims that "certain companies could have done a lot more to make their websites secure". The first weakness is that easy access web based service providers, such as Hotmail, appear more vulnerable than others accessed through a software programme on your PC (Compuserve, America Online, etc.). They use a simpler computer language to transmit data, which means the system is consequently easier to...