eBay asks its 112 million users to change passwords after data breach
By NATHANIEL MOTT at Pando
Bust out the password managers: eBay has announced that it will ask its 112 million users to change their passwords later today after discovering that a database containing their names, physical addresses, phone numbers, email addresses, and passwords was compromised in an attack thought to take place between February and March. The company says that financial information and “other confidential information” has not been affected by the security breach.
This is just the latest in a series of breaches forcing many people to change their passwords. Target’s 2013 data breach, which affected some 70 million holiday shoppers, is perhaps the most famous. Then there’s the Snapchat breach, which exposed the names and phone numbers of millions of users in the beginning of January. Last April, AOL urged its users to change their passwords after it suffered its own breach.
These attacks don’t just compromise the security of one service. Because many people repeat passwords or use a simple system to create new ones for each site, their entire digital life can be opened to hackers who get their hands on a password from a single website. (Read Adam Penenberg’s excellent story about how hackers were able to access much of his personal data to see how dangerous repeating passwords can be.) These 112 million eBay users are screwed.
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