We received this report from one of our readers.
Her account was hacked, and the scammer was using it to sending a distress email to her boyfriend asking for money.
Some quick advise to protect your email passwords:
1) Do not use the same login password for your social networking accounts and emails. We recommend that you use different passwords for each site.
2) Treat it like a bank account, only login using SSL pages (i.e. httpS://)
3) Try not to use public computer to access your primary emails (e.g. internet cafe).
4) Do not reply to phishing emails that ask you to click a link to access your email account. They might "scare" you by saying that if you don't react now, your account will be closed.
5) Install anti-virus on your computer and becareful about attachments from spam. Do not click on these attachments, including picture files.
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I discovered today at noon that hours earlier my email account
had been phished and was sending out scam emails.

I quickly got onto yahoo to resolve the matter, to discover that that every
folder on my mail account had been purged of all information. This
includes my website joining history, family news and updates, work and
financial related info was all gone. My trash folder, spam folder, inbox
and outbox were "spotless".

I went and also discovered that the hacker had attempted to remove my
alternate email addresses and replace them with their own. Unfortunately
for them, they were unable to access my alternate email accounts in order
to officially take over my account.

On top of the alternate emails they placed, they attempted to remove my
security questions and replace them with fake new ones.