<p>When I learnedvia Ryan Whatwam of Geek.comthat researchers at the University of Illinois at Chicago's Computer Science Lab had created a tool which can tell Gmail users how much their accounts are worth to a hacker, I immediately gave it a whirl. Twice, actuallyonce with a Gmail account I use for business stuff, once with my personal one. And I discovered that someone who broke into my accounts could theoretically make $5.30 from my business account and $28.30 from the personal one.</p><p>How so? A bad guy who has access to your e-mail can get into your other accounts, including social networking ones such as Facebook; e-commerce companies like Apple and Amazon; and a whole lot more. In some cases, access to your e-mail is the only thing the bad guy needs to "recover" your passwords for other services and thereby compromise them. Sometimes, other personal information is required for verification. But in either case, a hacker who manages to break into your accounts can sell information about them on the black market.</p><p>For instance, Cloudsweeper estimates that an Amazon account is worth $15, a Apple iTunes account $8 and a Facebook account $5. The auditing process scours your e-mail to determine which services are associated with it, then tallies the potential damage.</p><p>Another Cloudsweeper audit tells you about cleartext passwords in your Gmailones which are sitting right there in your inbox, unencrypted. Sending them that way is always a terrible idea, since they're at risk to theft along the way and are especially vulnerable if someone manages to snoop around in your mail. Once Cloudsweeper has found such passwords, it offers to encrypt them for you or simply delete them from the messages in question.</p><p><a href="http://techland.time.com/2013/06/27/gmail-security/">Keep reading...</a></p>