It’s not a good day for those of you who continue to stick with Yahoo for their primary email accounts. At the very least, this is going to make you change your password and security questions if you’re really prudent about it. Yahoo has officially made a statement saying that the account details, passwords, and even security questions and answers of at least 500 million accounts may have been compromised by hackers.
Yahoo says this about the data breach, that the hacked information may have included “names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords (the vast majority with bcrypt) and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers.” Yahoo says they are cooperating with law enforcement agencies in the investigation of the massive hack.
As for users, Yahoo says the prudent thing to do would be to change not only passwords and security questions to their Yahoo account, but to other web accounts that they have which they may have used similar passwords or credentials. Take it from us, you will want to do this right now. Yahoo somewhat reassures people that the hack did not include payment card data, or bank account information because payment card data and bank account information are not stored in the system that the investigation has found to be affected.
So if you are a Yahoo user, please make sure you promptly change your passwords, and even those accounts that you have similar credentials with, just to be sure. The sooner you change these details, the better.
SOURCE: Yahoo
