LoL ..
Exactly . . this post is very old . .but i think many of the newbies maybe looking for the answer to the same question, so all should give advices according to thier experience and knowledge.

As far as im concerned, it feels strange to answer even after so many replies by senior members but i also want to share something with all of newbies who want solution to the same problem. well according to my knowledge email account can be hacked by only few reasons.

one of the most common among hotmail users is that someone who know you very well hacked your email account, and this happens only coz u filled out the correct information while filling the hotmail membership form. mind one thing, always fill it with fake answers like if your secret questions is 'your pet name' for gawd sake neva fill it with your correct pet name coz ur secret question is more important than your password. or the second way is sometimes ur friend or whoever mails hotmail support appearing as its you and u lost ur account by any reason, and trust me hotmail staff are so dumb that they give out the hotmail account password after asking some very stupid questions like name any 5 of ur msn contacts or any 5 of the email addresses from ur adress book or latest 3-4 emails or any other. So, solution to this is the same, provide fake contact information coz if any one of the information provided to staff by the so called hacker wuld come up to be wrong, the staff member wont refresh the account.

by the way, many of us are cursing hotmail for low security although we dont know if the person has a hotmail account or maybe a yahoo account lol .. . anyways .. no matter wat email account u use . . but most of the weaknesses are the same as discussed above by other senior members like keyloggers, trojans or weak passwords.

In the end i wuld say . . Nothing Is Safe, No Matter Wat You Do!

Best of Luck!