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LiveJournal warned its users on Monday that lapsed Hotmail accounts are to blame for bloggers having their LiveJournal accounts hijacked.

"Recently some journals and communities have been broken into, their contents deleted, and their owners locked out," LiveJournal said in an e-mail to its users. "The problem appears to stem from Hotmail's policy of recycling inactive e-mail addresses." willie aames

Anyone can claim a Hotmail address if it has not been used in more than a year, the e-mail says. Hijackers are grabbing lapsed e-mail addresses that have been publicly displayed on LiveJournal profile pages and are re-registering them on LiveJournal.

It's unclear how the hijackers were able to figure out the passwords to the accounts.

A spokesperson for LiveJournal did not immediately return a phone call or e-mail seeking comment.

The LiveJournal e-mail urges users to keep their passwords secure and make sure they are in control of all the e-mail addresses associated with the account.

LiveJournal has added a "Manage Email Addresses" feature that allows users to delete e-mail addresses that are no longer active. Users have to have been using their main e-mail address for at least six months in order to delete the others.