It has been revealed that the Yahoo! data breach that has been widely reported in the past, including here on Tamebay, was much worse than the company had previously admitted. It now seems that every single account held with the company has been compromised by the hack.
The incident which took place in 2013, and is apparently the biggest of its kind of all time, has exposed the name, email address, password, date of birth and phone number of every single Yahoo account holder at the time. Think back and, if you’ve used the internet over any period of time, then it’s entirely probable that you had a Yahoo! account of some sort over the years. (If you want to double-check, regarding Yahoo! or other big data breaches, this site is useful.)
In a sense this is is not a very surprising piece of news. The numbers have been escalating regarding the number of accounts ever since the hack was first publicised last year. At first it looked like 500 million accounts were compromised and then 1 billion. Now it’s all of them. If one thing does seem certain this surely is the final nail in the coffin for the ailing Yahoo! brand which has been struggling for years.
It’s also a salient reminder to take time, every now and again, to review your password practices and make sure you’re doing all you can to stay secure. It’s good practice in your personal life but even more serious from a business perspective: a hack on your marketplace account or payment services could have mission critical implications and potentially a lack of revenue.
This means making sure your passwords are as secure and secret as possible, and changing them if you have been using them for a long time. It also pays to use a variety of passwords, and maybe even utilise a specialist safety service.
