My experience is that usually, if you need a new password, the admin gives you a temporary password that you can use once, to login, and in doing so you would be prompted to set up a new password. In email systems, it's customary to allow users to set their own passwords. Generally, an admin doesn't need to know his users' passwords. There is a system known as hashing, where your password is passed through an encryption algorithm and turned into a big number (its "hash"). That hash value is stored. When you log in, the password you type in is re-hashed and the new hash value is compared with the stored hash value. If they are the same then you entered the right password, and so the admin never ''needs ''to know your password. The encryption method is designed so that given the hash, it's practically impossible to reverse engineer the original password. (Though some hashing algorithms have been found to be weak in this respect; several different passwords might result in the same hash and knowing this makes it slightly easier for a hacker to discover a password that lets him in.) The greater concern over your email account being compromised (due to someone guessing your password) is not so much the violation of your privacy as the possibility of identity theft, where someone might be able to use your password to impersonate you. If they can read your emails, they can almost certainly send emails that appear to come from you. And many people do use the same password over and over again, so there's a good chance that the password will unlock other resources. One way to defeat passwords and hashing is to use malware to install a key logger; if a bad program can eavesdrop on the keys you type, before they are hashed, then it knows your password. This is one of the main reasons to use good anti-malware programs and be sure that you don't have any unwelcome guests on board.