Don’t be a fool. Use a password manager like Lastpass, 1password, or Keepass.
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Today’s hacked site is Raptr. You probably have a login if you own an AMD videocard, as their version of NV’s Geforce Experience runs Raptr. Usernames, email addresses, and hashed passwords (but no hint as to whether salted hashes) were exposed. Change your password today!
Oh thank god I never created an account there. Now I’ll have to rip it out of my steambox startup. Thanks AMD!
Hacker jackpot!
Anthem, the US’s second biggest health insurer with about 70 million people on its books across the country, admitted late on Wednesday, Pacific time, that it has been comprehensively ransacked by criminals. Tens of millions of records are likely to have been obtained illegally as a result of the hack, Anthem warned.
If your plan is branded Anthem Blue Cross; Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield; Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Georgia; Empire Blue Cross and Blue Shield; Amerigroup; Caremore; Unicare; Healthlink; or DeCare, you are at risk – your data may have been taken by thieves.
Yeah. That’s bad.
Ugh, they were our provider last year at work. Now they know what kind of blood pressure medicine I’m taking!
According to LA Times, the compromised database has no medical information. Just names, social security numbers, addresses, phones, emails, employment information. No worries… (sigh)
Damn, now the hackers won’t know for a fact that I suffer from BigHugeDong Diseaseitis.
. . . unless they hack my Qt3 account, too!
Yep, right before tax season, too. Criminals commonly use that personally identifiable information to send in fake tax returns and steal your refunds, which are then sent out on visa cards to any address the criminal specifies. When your tax refund is stolen, you complain about it and it goes at the end of a list at the IRS that is currently 640,000 entries long.
Alternatively, they can use that same info to apply for credit cards and loans in your name.
They got me too.
If this is categorized as a HIPAA violation, that could be quite a hefty fine.
It’s 80 million accounts. At $100 cost for identity theft protection each, that’s 800 million dollars. Of course most people won’t take it, but still-- the scope of this is just breathtaking.
That would be $8 billion, wouldn’t it?
Only if you count your zeroes correctly.
I just signed up with Lastpass a little bit ago, and typically have unique passwords for “important” stuff like my bank, Paypal and such, but still, it’s a good thing to have unique passwords for everything if possible, and with a good password manager, you can.
Question about Lastpass: I gather it’s free for the desktop, but in order to use it with mobile browsers I have to pay, right?
Correct.
My yearly subscription is about to end, considering I only used it a handful of times and mostly after I first got it, I’m passing on renewal.
It’s $12/year. Pretty good deal.
The Android client also works with (most) apps too, not just browsers.
+1 on password managers. I’ve used Keepass for years, and it makes these security breaches super easy to handle – log in, generate a new password, save, done. No worries about a break-in at one site compromising any other accounts of mine.