We interrupt your regularly-scheduled post for an important notice.
When I tried to log onto my e-mail this morning, I got a warning from Juno that it thought I had been hacked and I needed to change my password.
When I got onto my Twitter account, I found I was following a number of people that I’ve never heard of before (including “Jesus Christ”–an unusual Twitter choice for a Jew).
Then, as I was reading through my e-mails, I got this warning from a book company that I buy from:
At AbeBooks we take your security and privacy very seriously. As part of our routine monitoring, we discovered a list of email address and password sets posted online. While the list was not AbeBooks-related, we know that many customers reuse their passwords on several websites. We believe your email address and password set was on that list.
I also heard from someone that Yahoo passwords were leaked (which may be the list in question).
So, if anyone else notices weird shit going on with their e-mails or social media accounts, you may have been on that list. (If you’re on Yahoo at all, I think you should assume your passwords have been compromised.)
Now, I’m off to think up some new passwords for me and my boss and run spyware removal on my computer. The rot-gut bastards.
I’m too upset to write a Bloodsuckers episode today–or at least the one that was vaguely coalescing in my brain. I’m going to have to think of a new one where someone dies.
Keri M. Peardon 
No! Were you able to get control back of your accounts?
Yeah. Other than having odd followers on Twitter, I didn’t notice that anything had happened. I didn’t have any spam e-mails sent from my account, no crazy Tweets from me–nothing out of the ordinary. So apparently I caught it before it got ugly.
Sorry to hear that. Strangely, by a little serendipity, about two hours ago I posted a FB message noting that “I was hacked” is the new go to excuse that politicians and celebrities use to avoid taking credit for some drunken stupid post they made. Sine I haven’t seen any drunken stupid posts by you, I guess I can assume that they really got your account.
Did they change any of your passwords, or did they just mess with your twitter follows? You can probably assume that they did do a bunch of mass emails from your account to all your friends with suitable viruses attached.
I did hear about the Yahoo failure. Apparently Yahoo did next to nothing to keep their ids and passwords secure and thousands of them were stolen and posted online. If you used the same password for Yahoo as everything else, you might want to change everything just to be sure they haven’t got there before you.
No, they didn’t change my passwords or otherwise block me out (that I’ve found, anyways). And I don’t think they’ve used my e-mail for spam, because I’ve had that happen before, and my inbox was full of bouncing spam messages; I don’t have that this time. My e-mail addy, though, had a different password than my Yahoo account. I don’t use the same password or log-in across all my platforms, so that limits the damage. Juno may have just given me a warning because of the potential for a security breech. I’ve gotten warning messages from a couple of sites that they’re locking my account until I put in a new password–not because they’re showing signs of being hacked, but just as a precaution. Apparently everyone knows about this security breech.