"A lot of hackers get into your Gmail bsecuae they've hacked some other website were you've created an account ... and simply checked to see if the passwords work for Gmail as well"...or of course they may simply own an unscrupulous site, offer something great for free (such as exam braindump material, let's say) but you have to sign up for it and create an account. Bingo! hotmail, gmail, yahoo email addresses and likely passwords.I recently set up POP for my sister to download her Gmail, and it was off by default. Whether this is the case for newly-created accounts I don't know.