Yahoo said data stolen may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth and encrypted passwords but that unprotected passwords, payment card data and bank account information did not appear to have been compromised.
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Investigations are ongoing with law enforcement but the company has reason to believe credit card and bank details were not among the looted information.
The Yahoo breach is still under investigation, however, the tech giant has requested users to take necessary security measures to be safe from the Yahoo hack. These steps include invalidating unencrypted security questions and answers so they can not be used to access an account and asking potentially affected users to change their passwords.
To protect your account, if you have not changed your password since late-2014, it is advised you do so.
Yesterday it was alleged that Yahoo would report a hack of some 200 million user accounts.
Yahoo will be contacting potentially affected users by email.
Affected users will be notified and steps taken to secure their accounts. The only advice Yahoo provides to its users, which includes services to other provides such as British Telecom, is for users to change their passwords if they have not done so since 2014.
Yahoo has revealed a massive attack on its network, affecting over 500 million of its users.
“Online intrusions and thefts by state-sponsored actors have become increasingly common across the technology industry”, said Yahoo in a release.
Verizon said in July it would buy Yahoo’s core internet properties for almost five billion dollars.
It is recommended to change your password if you haven’t done so in the past two years.
Upon logging into a Yahoo account, this message pops up urging users to update their passwords and possibly add another recovery email and phone number.
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This timescale leaves Verizon with wiggle room to renegotiate the purchase price or even back out if it believes the security breach will harm Yahoo’s business.
