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Reuters via Yahoo News reports on an announcement by Yahoo! that an attacker "may have stolen names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth and encrypted passwords" for 500 million accounts in 2014. According to the announcement, the FBI is looking into the matter and that "The investigation has found no evidence that the state-sponsored actor is currently in Yahoo's network".
Yahoo Inc said on Thursday that at least 500 million of its accounts were hacked in 2014 by what it believed was a state-sponsored actor, a theft that appeared to be the world's biggest known cyber breach by far. Cyber thieves may have stolen names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth and encrypted passwords, the company said. But unprotected passwords, payment card data and bank account information did not appear to have been compromised, signalling that some of the most valuable user data was not taken. The attack on Yahoo was unprecedented in size, more than triple other large attacks on sites such as eBay Inc , and it comes to light at a difficult time for Yahoo. Chief Executive Officer Marissa Mayer is under pressure to shore up the flagging fortunes of the site founded in 1994, and the company in July agreed to a $4.83 billion cash sale of its internet business to Verizon Communications Inc . "This is the biggest data breach ever," said well-known cryptologist Bruce Schneier, adding that the impact on Yahoo and its users remained unclear because many questions remain, including the identity of the state-sponsored hackers behind it. On its website on Thursday, Yahoo encouraged users to change their passwords but did not require it.
Also covered at:
Ars Technica
Computerworld
cnet
phuys.org
(Score: 5, Informative) by edIII on Friday September 23 2016, @07:53PM
Super. Fucking. Simple.
I have no: Twitter account, Facebook account, Pinterest account, Reddit account, etc.
You know how many accounts I have out there with my actual name and information? Four. All vendor accounts that are delivering services to me that I resell. The account here actually has my real email address, but then again, I'm not worried about the staff here selling our information or bringing on a c-suite that would tell them that. When you need to get accounts with utility companies there isn't much you can do since they nearly all know the service address, your name, and your phone number. Those fucking assholes demand your social too, so we're all equally fucked, unlesssss.... you have enough money for a corporate shell. Then your corporations own the property, and they have the utility accounts. Any useful personal information is abstracted away behind your corporate shell, and you can have that owned Mosseck-Fonseca style preventing even determined research from identifying where you live, and who you are.
No cave required, and if rich enough, you can do it in plain sight of everyone else in a penthouse in New York.
What do you do with the rest of the accounts that you might want? LIE. For each and every website, use a randomly chosen name or phrase for your "handle", a throw-away email account (or just an alias on your domain), and a randomly chosen individualized password for that site. All other meta data requested are pure lies. Remembering lies can be quite difficult for the non-sociopaths, so my trick is to create a snapshot of the registration screen.
Of course, since we aren't addicted to oversharing our personal lives to make Mark Suckerburg rich, our personal information is fairly well locked up.
Uh, huh. Point of clarity here, are those real friends or just Facebook friends? There is a difference. I have zero Facebook friends, but I have plenty of friends otherwise. Most of them not on Facebook either, but still many are. Quite a number of my family members are.
Now real friends are much harder to cultivate and maintain. Beginning a friendship isn't as easy as clicking a like button, or "be-your-friend" button upon a shallow digital request. Real friends actually go out, engage in activities together.
My real friends and I can have a real conversation in public beyond 140-character sound bites and banal mostly-marketing-driven posts about what food we may be eating. They *call* me up and we actually *talk* about things that matter to us, share our pain, our fears, our joys, our laughter. What I don't receive are intellectually offensive and banal notifications that they just "ordered a rocking pizza from Dominos!", delivered by Dominos!, on behalf of my friend. Likewise I don't get useless short Twittered updates about their latest bowel movement. If they want to impress me, let me hear it from my seat in the restaurant.
Most rewardingly, my real friends can go out and be with each other and myself without phones ! That may quite a concept for you: Life without digital devices and Facebook/Twitter being your "3rd friend" in the group helping you deal with each other.
Yep, I'm fairly certain I'm much better off without Facebook friends and being forced to actually interact with them.
As smug as you are, I'm positive you have 4 digits worth of Facebook friends (it's easy too), but how many of them will go hiking with you? To the beach? Pick you at 3am when you're in trouble? Those are real friends; The ones who will deal with you without Facebook or Twitter.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.