Information on the Yahoo! breach is still filtering in, but it was indeed confirmed that there was an intrusion into the company’s servers that resulted in information on several million users. The latest reports are saying it’s up to at least 500 million and the data is from 2014. Previously it had been reported that the data was from 2012 which was information from this past summer. However, Yahoo! says this one is a separate breach. In any case, it’s a lot of affected users and a lot of personal data that was stolen including names, addresses, birthdates, telephone numbers, and answers to the additional security questions.
Anyone with a Yahoo! account of any type, or those who use the same login credentials for other online access as they do for a Yahoo! account should change passwords and associated security questions. Whatever password is chosen should be a strong one. It’s instinctual to use a word or name that we can easily remember, but that’s not the best way to construct passwords. They should be at least eight characters, difficult to guess (a jumble of characters is best), be different for each online account and consist of upper and lower case letters, numbers, and special characters.
In addition, watch for more spam and phishing. Phishing can come in the form of email messages with links or other attachments. Those attachments can be in many forms: Word docs, Excel files, PDF documents, script files, zip or compressed files, executable files, and possibly others. Often phishing email comes from an unknown sender, but it can also appear to come from someone you know and it doesn’t have to be from a personal email address. Business email addresses get compromised as well. If it’s an unexpected attachment or link, call or send a new email (as opposed to a reply) to the sender and make sure it is legitimate.
In addition, if phishing attacks happen, they often take advantage of out-of-date software running on your device. If there are any notifications that your software should be updated with a critical or security patch, you should take it seriously. Hackers do use popup windows to try and bait you, so if you are unsure how to safely apply patches, ask a technical support professional or contact your IT department at work.
Yahoo! also owns Tumblr and Flickr. Tumblr accounts are supposedly not affected by this, but some Flickr accounts may be. Therefore, it’s important to change those login credentials as well. It is also expected that phishing email could claim to be from Yahoo! with important information and updates, so don’t get tricked by those. Instead, go directly into your account or search reputable news sources for information about the breach.
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