Cybercriminals are buying and selling hacked email accounts for as little as 65p.

These hacked accounts are used to infect the hacked accounts contact list with spyware and trojans, and are sending out malicious URLs to the contacts, who, upon seeing an email from their friend or colleague opens the email straight away.

If a cybercriminal gets hold of your account it becomes a propagation vector. If they can get into your contacts lists they can send Trojans or malicious URLs from an account that is trusted,” Con Mallon, consumer director of regional product marketing at Symantec, told PC Pro.

The greater worry is ID theft – with many services offering to send new passwords to email accounts, its not hard for hackers to access services – especially as such services usually email their users offers with forgotten password links included.

The advice as always is to have a comprehensive security solution in place, to keep changing your password and for if the worst happens, ensure you have a working backup solutions.

Help with all these are available from Mattian, visit http://www.mattian.co.uk/itsupport/ for more information.