MSE News: 500 million Yahoo user accounts hacked - what to do to protect yourself

Former_MSE_Maeve

500 million Yahoo user accounts hacked - what to do to protect yourself...

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'500 million Yahoo user accounts hacked - what to do to protect yourself'

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AndyPix

erm - change your password ?


Or delete your account and join this century

Fightsback

Maeve, you're a bit late to the party as we already have opened the beer on this one:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5529813

S0litaire

*Note*
With this breach changing passwords probably not help you will have to change your security questions as well.

Since the "Security questions and answers" associated with accounts were also in the breach and were NOT encrypted...

So in theory they could go through yahoo automated systems and get access even if you change the password.

datostar

I can't for the life of me remember the password I used for a Yahoo account years ago. I wonder if I could find it on the 'dark web' somewhere and retrieve zillions of spam emails. On second thoughts, I won't bother.

agarnett

As usual, major corporate

• cocks up security
• fails to notice for a ridiculous period and/or doesn't own up for a ridiculous period
• fails to give candid advice about the real import of the data security breach
• fails to provide means to self-assess damage.

I have some old Yahoo accounts. Luckily they contained almost no personal data apart from various IPs I had used over years which is not good as rogue data combiners could cross refer / join Yahoo data with other data they have collected.

In particular I noted from media reports that personally chosen Security Q&As had been compromised by the Yahoo breach.

Curious as to any Q&As I may have used, I went searching under My Account on Yahoo. I found that the only surviving reference to my Security Q&As was that Yahoo recommended "for security" I click on a link to delete them without telling me what they were or offering a chance to edit them! Totally useless in trying to assess what personal Q&As may be compromised.

Pincher

The name of my favourite pet is something else these days.
My grad father has now changed profession.

If they actually followed up on these answers,
they could section me for having delusions.

Another problem is, how am I supposed to keep track of these fibs?

agarnett

If they actually followed up on these answers,
they could section me for having delusions.

The problem is that the "they" you allude to, aren't interested in protecting you from yourself.

The problem "they" is organised crime and "state actors" who will soon be able to identify you exactly from the unique nature of not the false trail itself, but of the way you lay your false trail, or simply the lay of the land you inhabit!

The way I look at the problem for us all is a bit like the way few of us are capable of hiding a unique location on this planet from Google Earth - perhaps the entrance to our gold mine sitting in a shaded valley, or maybe just the oversized garden shed we should not have built without permission.

Even if we manage to camouflage images of our asset on the main Google Earth image and database, every time the Google Streetview car passes we risk that our asset is snapped from an odd angle, and every time some avid collector of gold mine locations built up from historical and geographical records, fancies releasing his work as a kmz, or the planning department develops some jolly automated wheeze for comparing Google Earth data with old Ordnance Survey Data and Land Registry data, we worry that we will be targeted afresh!

victor2

Pincher wrote: »

The name of my favourite pet is something else these days.
My grad father has now changed profession.

If they actually followed up on these answers,
they could section me for having delusions.

Another problem is, how am I supposed to keep track of these fibs?

That is certainly a challenge.
If a site I've forgotten my password to asks me my date of birth, it will be whatever date I clicked on making me between 18 and 100 years old when I registered...