Hacking is nothing new and the prospect of losing your account details is something we should all prepare for. However, a huge haul of accounts have just been found for sale on the dark web, 620 million of them. Taken from a bunch of websites over the past year, the account details are enough to log into the site and change the personal details of the original owner. They can also be used for phishing, scamming and more.
Dave’s Computers isn’t into scaremongering or clickbait headlines but this haul of account details covers some very popular websites. That warrants a blog post warning all our customers that their details may be among them. The price for all 620 million accounts is $20,000 in bitcoin. Not a lot of money considering the potential value.
If you are a member of any of the following websites, you need to log into them right away and change your details. You may be too late but you should definitely try:
- Dubsmash (162 million accounts exposed)
- MyFitnessPal (151 million accounts exposed)
- MyHeritage (92 million accounts exposed)
- ShareThis (41 million accounts exposed)
- HauteLook (28 million accounts exposed)
- Animoto (25 million accounts exposed)
- EyeEm (22 million accounts exposed)
- 8fit (20 million accounts exposed)
- Whitepages (18 million accounts exposed)
- Fotolog (16 million accounts exposed)
- 500px (15 million accounts exposed)
- Armor Games (11 million accounts exposed)
- BookMate (8 million accounts exposed)
- CoffeeMeetsBagel (6 million accounts exposed)
- Artsy (1 million accounts exposed)
- DataCamp (700,000 accounts exposed)
As you can see, there are some very popular sites in that list, including fitness and dating. Both types of website will also likely contain a lot of personal data. If you want to know more about the hack, British site The Register has all the details.
If you use one of these websites, try to log in right away and change your password, initiate two-factor authentication if you can and monitor the account. Some of these hacks happened up to a year ago but the data is only recently on sale. You may still have time to get into your account and lock it down before someone else does.
Don’t panic if you’re one of those hacked
If your account has been hacked you can still claim it back. First, try to log in and change the password to a very strong one. Then utilize two-factor authentication wherever possible. Do the same for any other account you use the same login for and never, ever use the same username and password for multiple websites. This is why!
If you cannot get access to the account, contact the customer service desk of the site in question. Explain what happened and that you need your account reset. If any of the websites contain financial data such as credit card details, you need to alert the credit reference agencies and put a freeze on your account. This will prevent a hacker applying for credit in your name.
This all sounds serious but it doesn’t have to be. As long as you move quickly and lock down your account if you can and watch your finances, you should be okay.
