There was a massive password leakage happened in the end of 2011 and early 2012. Probably more than 100 millions of passwords from more than ten popular websites including some popular social network websites, were made available on the internet (BT or eDonkey). The size of the password files added up to 10GB after compressed. Some significant amount of the passwords were in plain text when obtained so that with such a huge dictionary rainbow table can be used to decrypt the a large portion of rest.

So the reality is really nasty. Many of the netizen in China are somehow running naked: you can simply query the password after you get the email.