On the heels of news that California-based Yahoo! agreed to be acquired by Verizon Communications, the company is in the news for a possible data breach. The hacker that previously offered data for sale on the dark web from LinkedIn and MySpace is offering up user names, scrambled passwords, and birth dates for 200 million Yahoo! users.
Yahoo! is still investigating the claims of the hacker, who uses the name Peace, that the data is indeed from Yahoo! and that it is likely from 2012.
Anyone with a Yahoo! account should change the account password, especially if this has not been done since 2012. When doing so, make sure to include at least eight characters, upper and lower case letters, numbers, and a special character or more. Avoid using personal details as part of passwords. Personal details include things like your birth date, birth year, or your address. It is even recommended not to use names or birthdates of your kids, pets’ names or anything that can be linked to you by someone with ill-intentions.
Make a habit of changing passwords regularly. Quarterly is recommended, especially for accounts that hold sensitive information such as banking or trading accounts. Don’t use passwords across multiple accounts either. If one account is illegally accessed, hackers are using the passwords on other accounts hoping that you have re-used it on several. They are having significant success doing this.
If your account gives the option to use multi-factor authentication (MFA), take advantage of it. In a statement about this possible breach, Yahoo! stated that they “always encourage [their] users to create strong passwords, or give up passwords altogether by using Yahoo Account Key.”
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