Oh NO, Yahoo has confirmed the account hack and sent “Notice of data breach” to its users. This means that these are real news other than being hoaxes as many of us have been thinking. As an active Yahoo account holder, I never believed the email I had in my inbox the very moment I turned on my computer. If you are a user, you got to checkout and read this post in detail..
In fact, I first ignored it thinking that in no way Giant Yahoo could have up to One billion of its user accounts hacked. Like you may be knowing, many hoax messages about various companies, celebrities and etc have been ongoing for a long time. This only has made many not to believe in different email messages receive about related.
But this time round, Yahoo has confirmed that up to “One Billion accounts were hacked”. If you are still thinking that this isn’t real, I would suggest that you immediately log into your email and read that “Notice of Data breach” email message just like you see mine I received below..
NOTICE OF DATA BREACH
Dear KWS Adams,
We are writing to inform you about a data security issue that may involve your Yahoo account information. We have taken steps to secure your account and are working closely with law enforcement.
What Happened?
Law enforcement provided Yahoo in November 2016 with data files that a third party claimed was Yahoo user data. We analyzed this data with the assistance of outside forensic experts and found that it appears to be Yahoo user data. Based on further analysis of this data by the forensic experts, we believe an unauthorized third party, in August 2013, stole data associated with a broader set of user accounts, including yours. We have not been able to identify the intrusion associated with this theft. We believe this incident is likely distinct from the incident we disclosed on September 22, 2016.
What Information Was Involved?
The stolen user account information may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords (using MD5) and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers. Not all of these data elements may have been present for your account. The investigation indicates that the stolen information did not include passwords in clear text, payment card data, or bank account information. Payment card data and bank account information are not stored in the system we believe was affected.
What We Are Doing
We are taking action to protect our users:
We are requiring potentially affected users to change their passwords.
We invalidated unencrypted security questions and answers so that they cannot be used to access an account.
We continuously enhance our safeguards and systems that detect and prevent unauthorized access to user accounts.
What You Can Do
We encourage you to follow these security recommendations:
Change your passwords and security questions and answers for any other accounts on which you used the same or similar information used for your Yahoo account.
Review all of your accounts for suspicious activity.
Be cautious of any unsolicited communications that ask for your personal information or refer you to a web page asking for personal information.
Avoid clicking on links or downloading attachments from suspicious emails.
Additionally, please consider using Yahoo Account Key, a simple authentication tool that eliminates the need to use a password on Yahoo altogether.
For More Information
For more information about this issue and our security resources, please visit the Yahoo Security Issues FAQs page available at https://yahoo.com/security-update.
Protecting your information is important to us and we work continuously to strengthen our defenses.
Sincerely,
Bob Lord
Chief Information Security Officer
Yahoo
When you take a look at the email content above, you will get to know that its real. Best of all is that you have been recommended on what you should do next to ensure that you don’t fall victim. One burning question is about how this managed to happen. In fact, it tells us all that no one is safe when it comes to data protection online. See you then.
