There are many motives that could possibly drive a hacker to attempt to get into your, or anyone else’s email. Email security has become greater, but so has the number of hackers, and their ability to access your email. There are also more motives to hack an email now, as so much business and personal life usually has something to do with emails. A hacker may want to access your email because most people have multiple accounts from third party websites that the hacker would like to gain access to.
PayPal is a perfect example of a website that a hacker may want access to. Paypal is a website that allows the transferring of money over the internet and it is often connected to a bank account or credit card. Gaining access to your email would allow the hacker to change your password to all the websites you have linked to your email, and in this case they would be able to steal money from you. This motive is a one of the most common, as getting into one’s email basically unlocks the door to everything that they have linked to that specific email.
Another reason could be that they seek information about their particular target. For example, a hacker may be curious about an individual. The hacker could hack into the targets email, because it is much more anonymous than spying on somebody in real life or, the target could be too far away to attempt to do that. An example of this type of hacker is David Kernell. David Kernell is the man who broke into Sarah Palin’s email to try to find information that could possibly derail her campaign. This hacker however was caught and sentenced to a year in prison.
Many emails contain a lot of sensitive information about the owner. Some people do not delete information from their past which hackers may target to blackmail an individual or something even more sinister.
Ego is another common reason for email hacking. Hackers like to feel as if they are the best. When a hacker gets into your email he or she feels a feeling of accomplishment. It is like a sport, everyone in it wants to be the best, and by showing that you can hack emails is a good way to prove it.
Finally, a lot of email sites will want to test the security of their email system, so they may hire a hacker to try to breach into one of their test accounts. This is rather rare compared to the other types of hacking, because not many hackers are hired for this.
Although getting your email account hacked isn’t common, it is necessary to protect your email from those with malicious intents. These are obviously not all the motives that a hacker may have, as they could have any number of personal reasons. Just be careful with what you do on your email accounts, and remember to keep your account information as secure and private as you can.
