Yahoo hacked again. What you need to do
Yesterday, Yahoo announced that 500 million accounts had been stolen by a state-sponsored hack back in 2014. So if you use Yahoo Mail, or any other of their services like Flickr, it’s time to change your password once again. Even if you’ve changed your password since the hack took place it is recommended that you update your password again. This inevitably brings out the articled and blog posts about how to keep your passwords secure, and this is one of them.
First, you should try using a passphrase instead of a password. Also you should really consider enabling two-factor authentication for most of your accounts. Some tech experts also suggest using a password manager. Personally, I don’t care for password managers for one reason, they require a master password. That means that all your passwords can have a single point of failure. If you lose your password manager’s password then all your passwords could be lost. Conversely, if someone were to access your password manager’s password they’d have access to all your passwords. However, your results may vary.
A great resource to see if any of your accounts have been hacked is the “have i been pwned?” website. At their website you can enter your email address to see if any of your accounts associated with your email address have been compromised in the most infamous hacks that have taken place on the internet.
Lastly, and this one can’t be stressed enough, don’t use the same password for all your accounts. That is how most accounts get hacked. Hackers will get an email address and password from one hack, such as Yahoo’s, and then will try them on other services like Facebook to try to gain even more of your personal information.
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