I, like you, expect certain things from an online vendor or service. Of course, I expect that you’ll provide the goods and services advertised at the agreed upon time and price but furthermore, (and not so obviously) I expect that you will protect my information. Unfortunately, our information is extremely valuable to criminals and many of our big name online and in store vendors have fallen prey to their intrusion.
eBay has been the latest victim of cyber predators who want to get their hands on that very information. This week, eBay announced that the had suffered a security breach. Apparently a handful of employee login credentials were lifted and this allowed the hackers to access to eBay’s corporate network. While this was apparently a recent discovery, the investigation uncovered that eBay’s infrastructure happened in late February/ early March.
Member names and the associated password, email address, physical address, phone number, and date of birth were all included in the compromised database. While eBay also owns payment powerhouse Paypal but has assured users that the breach was isolated and did not impact Paypal accounts.
With this type of information, at minimum the hackers can take over an account. Big picture, this can be aggregated w/ other public information and used to steal your identity. While you can’t predict these types of things specifically, if this isn’t a screaming endorsement for having a password update strategy, I don’t know what is.
We recommend that you update your eBay passwords immediately as well as any other accounts that you have linked to that account and any others that you use the same password for. For more tips on creating secure passwords check out my password post from January.
In signing off (in my best Dos XX guy voice) stay vigilant my friends!
Teltek is a Certified Avaya Business Partner, NEC Dealer, and Microsoft Partner with two locations in the Baltimore Metropolitan area. We specialize in providing one call technology support for small to mid-sized businesses and nonprofits in Maryland, Washington, DC, Virginia and Pennsylvania