Email accounts are extremely vulnerable to attacks on the online identity. Why? If someone can capture an email-account, this at the same time means he gets the power to capture accounts on other websites e.g. facebook, paypal(?) etc.
This is because people tend to register one single email address for multiple other accounts, which gives attackers the power to reset passwords, and thus gain control over these other accounts. Fortunately, for some of these accounts you need to know the nickname that is registered. I don't have the statistics, but i would guess the nicknames aren't incredibly hard to guess most of the time (people probably tend to reuse those).
==> keep your email accounts safe guys (especially don't use your email password for other accounts!)
