Post by kas on Aug 13, 2012 18:12:42 GMT -5
My mom found out just today that all her Yahoo emails were deleted and so were her contacts. I suspected she was hacked and got her in touch with an online Yahoo representative to get her emails and contacts back. However she lost all her emails (were not able to retrieve them as they ask for what date to retrieve from so we said the last day she checked the email which was 2 days ago and said 1pm. However we do not know at what times or how often Yahoo saves a back up so after that didn't work and it was time to try to get back the contacts I typed in Wed for her (5 days ago instead of 2) and the contacts were able to be retrieved.
Now doing research I ran across this:
and this from the same article:
www.latestonnet.com/2012/07/14/yahoo-hacked-450000-passwords-stolen-check-if-your-credentials-leaked.html
What the Yahoo representative told us is that we should ALWAYS have a back up copy of all our emails we want to keep including the attachments because they can't guarantee they can get back all our emails and contacts ... especially when it is only a FREE account.
Well now you know and I wanted to post this so that other know.
More suggestions:
Change your password and secret questions often
and have a different set of those for each email and any other websites.
Also do NOT use public computers (this problem only happened for my mom after she used a new public computer at work .. it was fast and new so she assumed it was safe but it was IE).
Now I am not saying that Internet Explorer is bad but you can't depend on the default settings or public computers being set up the most secure .. especially when many people use it and people sometimes do not know how to log out properly (my mom only "clicked the red X" in the browser to close the email - she did not log out).
Now doing research I ran across this:
But today its Yahoo turn and the group of hackers succeeded in it by exploiting an SQL injection vulnerability found on a Yahoo subdomain.
The leaked information includes MySQL server variables, names of database tables and columns, as well as a list of 453,492 email addresses and passwords in plain text.
The leaked information includes MySQL server variables, names of database tables and columns, as well as a list of 453,492 email addresses and passwords in plain text.
and this from the same article:
βAt Yahoo! we take security very seriously and invest heavily in protective measures to ensure the security of our users and their data across all our products. We confirm that an older file from Yahoo! Contributor Network (previously Associated Content) containing approximately 400,000 Yahoo! and other company users names and passwords was stolen yesterday,July 11. Of these, less than 5% of the Yahoo! accounts had valid passwords. We are fixing the vulnerability that led to the disclosure of this data, changing the passwords of the affected Yahoo! users and notifying the companies whose users accounts may have been compromised. We apologize to affected users. We encourage users to change their passwords on a regular basis and also familiarize themselves with our online safety tips at security.yahoo.com.β
www.latestonnet.com/2012/07/14/yahoo-hacked-450000-passwords-stolen-check-if-your-credentials-leaked.html
What the Yahoo representative told us is that we should ALWAYS have a back up copy of all our emails we want to keep including the attachments because they can't guarantee they can get back all our emails and contacts ... especially when it is only a FREE account.
Well now you know and I wanted to post this so that other know.
More suggestions:
Change your password and secret questions often
and have a different set of those for each email and any other websites.
Also do NOT use public computers (this problem only happened for my mom after she used a new public computer at work .. it was fast and new so she assumed it was safe but it was IE).
Now I am not saying that Internet Explorer is bad but you can't depend on the default settings or public computers being set up the most secure .. especially when many people use it and people sometimes do not know how to log out properly (my mom only "clicked the red X" in the browser to close the email - she did not log out).