Yahoo hacked – signs your account has been stolen and what to do

YAHOO yesterday revealed how hackers had stolen personal information from around 500million of its users in a massive cyber-heist.

The company said the breach happened in late 2014, but was only recently discovered after an internal investigation.

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A spokesman for Yahoo announced a “state-sponsored actor” was likely to blame for the hack, adding that the company was now working closely with the authorities.

The spokesman revealed: “The account information may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords (the vast majority with bcrypt) and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers.”

Unprotected passwords, payment card data and bank account information were not among the details taken, the company said.

Yahoo also encouraged users to review their online accounts for any suspicious activity.

But what would you look for? And what can you do to shore up your security to make sure nobody has hacked your account?

The signs

• Your account information has changed without your knowledge
• There are logins from locations you don't recognize on your recent activity page
• You aren't receiving expected emails
• Your Yahoo Mail account is sending spam
• Yahoo has also promised to notify users whose details were accessed, so keep an eye out for any correspondence from them

READ MORE: 

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THE SPY IN YOUR POCKET How more than 100,000 cameras on personal computers and phones across the UK are vulnerable to online hackers

What to do

• Change your password (especially if it has been the same for a number of years)
• Update your security questions and answers, and choose answers that aren’t easy to find online
• Ask yourself if you used the same password/security questions on other accounts (if so, change them as well, and never recycle the same ones again)
• Get a better, more complicated password that hackers won’t be able to guess (use a mixture of upper and lower case letters, plus numbers)
• Delete old accounts on random websites that you don’t use anymore, so your info can’t be stolen from there instead

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