It has been reported by various news powerhouses such as the New York post that the email addresses of yahoo customers have been hacked and information stolen by the hackers. According to one Hayley Tsukayama, this is a devastating and an inconvenience since many users will be required to change their passwords so as to protect their personal information.
Yahoo has become bold enough to accept this. According to its official blog, that a considerable number of its user’s information (this includes both the password and the username) were actually exposed to the cyber criminals. Yahoo went ahead to warn that the attackers use this opportunity retrieve the information of Yahoo users by the use of malicious softwares.
According to yahoo, it is possible that the information of the users may have been extracted from other third-part data systems and not necessarily yahoo’s database. The Senior Vice President of Platforms and personalization products, Jay Rossiter wrote in a post on the Washington post.
Due to this reason the company has decided to beef up its security so as to ensure that the user’s profile and their personal information are protected. The company intends to achieve this by ensuring that the passwords of the affected accounts are reset immediately. The company is also sending e-mails to notify the affected users on how to ensure that their accounts are secure together with a set of guidelines so that they can change their password. Since this is a very crucial step that needs to be taken, the company has also started to send text messages to users who had supplied their phone numbers.
In order to avoid any loss of information by Yahoo users, or even avoid their personal information from being compromised the users should not only change their Yahoo login information but also the credentials of accounts of other services that are connected to yahoo. This is because of the reason that hacking may jeopardize such accounts especially if the accounts use the e-mail addresses (Yahoo) as the usernames. As much as this has been repeated more than one time, it is a very crucial as the hackers may be in a position to use the hacked information to compromise other e-mail addresses. Take an example of a [email protected]; a hacker may easily figure out that this user has another Gmail address in the form of [email protected]. Hence, for us to be on the safer side, let us heed the advice and do what is best.
The other way in which we can ensure that our email addresses are secure is by being on the watch for any spam. According to Yahoo, the hackers were in a position to acquire the e-mail addresses and the names of some recent contacts on most of the hacked accounts.
Yahoo has advised us that if we receive any strange e-mail, then we should not click on the link that is in the email. We should always ignore the message and even delete it. For the purpose of protecting many people and our friends too, it is advisable to inform them on these fake e-mails so as to keep them aware.
The company has gone ahead and released an apology to its users and in addition assured the users that is has put up extra measures that will be able to prevent hacking on its internet systems.
Since the company is one of the largest e-mail providers, it must ensure that its users are protected and further come clear on how many user accounts have been compromised, which is an issue that Yahoo has decided not to talk about.
