The web and even mainstream media is abuzz with news that thousands, yes, thousands of email credentials for Hotmail, Google, and Yahoo users have been leaked to the web. Media pundits are screaming that we should all change our passwords before we’re doomed to hacker hell…

But, let’s just step back from that for a moment. Yes, tens of thousands of users who were not savvy enough to recognize a phishing scam may have betrayed their security to scamsters by clicking a link in an email or visiting a dodgy website.

But, tens of thousands is not a large proportion of the population. According to TechCrunch in August:

GMail is now the third largest Web mail service in the U.S with 37 million users versus AOL Email with it’s 36m. Windows Live Hotmail has 47m but Yahoo Mail is streets ahead with 106million logged as monthly unique visitors.

So, 20,000 Hotmail logins posted…that’s about 0.04 percent of all Hotmail users. For those 20,000 users and all the other users, this could be a big deal, if someone uses steals their login or uses their account maliciously. But, for everyone else, look at it this way, a fraction of a mere 0.04% of Hotmail users may be actually be affected, that’s a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of the world’s population.