They usually target females for their stranded, helpless hooker routines.

& I really did NOT wire the money to a pretend realitive who was pretending to be a Police commander.  I Googled the Madrid Police to come up with a Police district which I thought was a nice touch.  
skb

I think it was through the Ya-Ho servers (despite their claims).  My mail box was accessed...  I wasn't saving copies to a SENT FOLDER because I didn't want evidence hanging around...  but I am now, I just clear them after.  My passwords weren't changed (but I did change them anyway) and my security questions are fake answers (that's how Sarah Palin's account got hacked during the last election...  hacker looked up the answers to plug into the questions).  The security answers should be as strong as your passwords in my view.    

A Fav provider had her HotMail account taken over & she never got it back...   I now think it is not all on the user...  Why hack one user at a time when hacking the servers gets you lots of addresses at once?

I added my civie "junk mail" address to my hobby address book list.  My civie accounts cross so spam from one would show up in the other.   If someone spams from my account, I'll know about it!  I now have both my civie & hobby address book backed up in other accounts, if you loose the account, you can rebuild the address book.  

Tatally a shame but what can you do?
skb

then I had fun with the hacker...  I created an account just to reply from.  Then went back & forth for days with them.  Fake friend claimed to be stranded in London.  I DO have realitives in London.  So I said to call my realitive or I'd have my cousin drop by.  Or could stay with my realitive.   Then I told them my cousin was calling the Police & the hacker quit.   I then deleted the account.  
skb