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MySpace And Tumblr Breach: Hundreds Of Millions Of Passwords Stolen From Before 2013, How To Make Your Info Safer And More Hack-Proof

By Becky Padilla
Published on: 10:13 PST, May 31, 2016

Remember when MySpace was the place to be? It was like the halls of high school and every fun place with your friends, only online. But, like everything from high school to MTV, that site has morphed from its original set-up. However, hackers don’t care. Your private information is always at risk, and it might have been stolen and exposed yet again.

Half a BILLION

That is the number of passwords believed to have been accessed this time in the data breach from MySpace, and also from Tumblr, files—almost half a billion. Some 427 million passwords. Even if you haven’t been on the sites for years, if you set them up prior to 2013, your password information might have been one of the ones stolen. And if you are like many people, you might have only one or two often-used passwords that are like a master key and open the “front door” to everything you have from your email to your bank account.

It’s time to change that.

Millions of pieces of data have been accessed, stolen, shared and sold—which includes everything from usernames, passwords, addresses, dates of birth, phone numbers, credit card data and account numbers, to Social Security numbers—in thousands of hacks over the years. As technology gets better, so do technology attackers. In the last year alone, the following are only a few of the companies breached and records stolen (in millions).

Target – 70 million, Home Depot – 56 million, Anthem – 80 million, OPM – 21 million (2nd breach), Panama Papers (Mossack Fonseca) – 11 million+, AOL (repeatedly) – 2 million to 92 million, LinkedIn – almost 8 million, Ashley Madison – 37 million. And from MySpace and Tumblr – almost 450 million passwords were taken. Those are extremely high numbers. And that is a lot of personal information that belongs to people who never intended for that personal information to be shared.

This is a great graphic that shows a sampling of places that have been hit over the last decade and how much was taken. This information is sold on the black market (dark web) and is obviously lucrative or hackers wouldn’t still be stealing information and selling it. As of a few days ago, the hundreds of millions of passwords from MySpace were put up for sale on the dark web for six bitcoins, which is approximately $2,800. Seems pretty lucrative.

No Safety in These Numbers

Out of the top 10 passwords found, hacked, shared and worst of all, USED to begin with, were: password1, abc123, 123456, 123456a, and others that any 5-year-old could get into.

Really?

It doesn’t take that much creativity or effort to up-safety our passwords. If someone is going to use “123456”, that person might as well just publish their name, address, date of birth, social security number, and all bank account numbers on social media to make it just as easy for somebody to get their information.

People have to think of the information that is online, such as bank accounts and emails and websites (online shopping) and any and everything that is accessed online, as something akin to your dining room table. Picture every important document or number in your life sitting on pieces of paper on your dining room table. Now picture opening your front door and posting on social media that your house is open for the afternoon and everybody is welcome.

Who do you think would walk in? Who would pick up a piece of paper or document, slip it into their pocket, and walk out, never to be seen again? Just like the money in your bank account? Or your house after they hack your life, commit identity fraud, and breach every important piece of data that connects you and your credit so you lose your house and the bills aren’t paid?

Spelling for Safety

There are easy tricks that you can use immediately to make your information more hack-proof, but you have to take it seriously. These people take data hacking seriously and we must be just as serious about keeping it out of their hands.

In addition to apps and programs that generate passwords, there are also password managers out there like LastPass and 1Password that help you use and manage strong passwords in different places.

You can also easily make your password safer by changing just a couple things. Here are some simple rules of thumb:

  • NEVER use a dictionary word. If it can be found in the dictionary, even if you put a number before or after it, don’t use it as is.
  • Replace any letter with a capital letter, especially in the middle of the word.
  • Replace any letter with a number and/or symbol.

Example: “paperclip” is weak; “paPerCliP” is better but still weak, and “p4P3r@l1&” is strong.

  • The more digits, the better.
  • The more complicated, the better. If you can make a sentence and use only the first letter of the words to something you can easily remember, even better. If you have to write it down or keep it stored somewhere safe, do it. You don’t want to use one password for everything.

Example: “mwdmmahawihk” is in the medium range because it cannot be found in the dictionary (my wedding day made me as happy as when i had kids). But “m<dMm@4*w!hK” is stronger.

If you have now or ever had a MySpace or Tumblr account, even if you haven’t been there in years, change your password or delete your account. Also, if you used that same password on anything else at all, change it there, too. This data was apparently breached before Memorial Day weekend, but there is no guarantee how long it could have been circulating, or who it was sold to. It is always better to be safe than sorry.

[Photo by Chris Jackson/Getty Images]

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