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An analysis of 18,000 addresses revealed that male names are more likely to be attacked.
In the world of cybersecurity, unexpected research results have emerged that make you think about the connection between a person's name and the vulnerability of their email. Mailsuite, a company specializing in email tracking, conducted a large-scale analysis that covered 18,000 email addresses containing the most common first and last names in the United States.
The results were startling: it turns out that some names are much more likely to be targeted by hackers. The leader among male names was "Bob" – on average, each address with this name accounts for 180 cases of hacking! This is followed by "John" (175.1 break-ins) and "Alex" (144 break-ins). Among women's names, the championship is held by "Maria" with an indicator of 115.3 hacking per address.
Interestingly, women's names were generally less vulnerable – none of them were included in the overall top 10 most frequently hacked names. Mailsuite experts note that the high vulnerability of the name "Bob" may be due to its frequent use in encryption theory along with the name "Alice". However, "Alice" was not even included in the top twenty most vulnerable female names.
Surnames also did not go unnoticed by researchers. Addresses with the surname "Ali" are the most frequently attacked (115.1 hacks per address), followed by "King" (96.4) and "Smith" (94.4).
As for popular email services, the leader in the number of hacks was Gmail – an average of 80 cases per address. Yahoo and Hotmail are slightly behind, with scores of 74.2 and 67.7, respectively. However, Mailsuite experts emphasize that these figures do not indicate a low level of security for these services, but only reflect their popularity among users.
The Mailsuite study was conducted using the Have I Been Pwned database, through which the generated email addresses were checked.
So how do you protect your email from unwanted attention from cybercriminals? Security experts recommend:
Source
In the world of cybersecurity, unexpected research results have emerged that make you think about the connection between a person's name and the vulnerability of their email. Mailsuite, a company specializing in email tracking, conducted a large-scale analysis that covered 18,000 email addresses containing the most common first and last names in the United States.
The results were startling: it turns out that some names are much more likely to be targeted by hackers. The leader among male names was "Bob" – on average, each address with this name accounts for 180 cases of hacking! This is followed by "John" (175.1 break-ins) and "Alex" (144 break-ins). Among women's names, the championship is held by "Maria" with an indicator of 115.3 hacking per address.
Interestingly, women's names were generally less vulnerable – none of them were included in the overall top 10 most frequently hacked names. Mailsuite experts note that the high vulnerability of the name "Bob" may be due to its frequent use in encryption theory along with the name "Alice". However, "Alice" was not even included in the top twenty most vulnerable female names.
Surnames also did not go unnoticed by researchers. Addresses with the surname "Ali" are the most frequently attacked (115.1 hacks per address), followed by "King" (96.4) and "Smith" (94.4).
As for popular email services, the leader in the number of hacks was Gmail – an average of 80 cases per address. Yahoo and Hotmail are slightly behind, with scores of 74.2 and 67.7, respectively. However, Mailsuite experts emphasize that these figures do not indicate a low level of security for these services, but only reflect their popularity among users.
The Mailsuite study was conducted using the Have I Been Pwned database, through which the generated email addresses were checked.
So how do you protect your email from unwanted attention from cybercriminals? Security experts recommend:
- Create multiple addresses for different purposes
- Avoid using your name in the address if possible
- Use unique passwords for each account
- Keep a close eye out for reports of possible hacks
- If an address is suspected of being compromised, immediately change the password, check all associated accounts, and strengthen protection with antivirus software.
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