Warning: Online Hackers' Target to Hack are Your Online Bank and Credit Card Information

Now Yahoo is on alert against e-mail hackers. Bob Lord - the Company Chief Information Security Officer is sending notices to its users with the subject 'Notice Of Data Breach' to alert its users to become cautious of unsolicited communications that ask for personal information. Samples of unsolicited communications my Yahoo mail received also known as spams or scams Earlier of December 2016, Yahoo has reported that there were about one billion Yahoo accounts hacked. For this reason, Yahoo encourages users to review all of their online accounts for suspicious activity and to change their passwords and security questions and answers for any other accounts on which they use the same or similar information used for their Yahoo account. Yahoo users should avoid clicking links or downloading attachments from suspicious emails. What is Data Breach? A data breach is a security incident in which sensitive, protected or confidential data is copied, transmitted, viewed, stolen or used by an individual unauthorized to do so. Data breaches may involve financial information such as credit card or bank details, personal health information (PHI), Personally identifiable information (PII), trade secrets of corporations or intellectual property. Most data breaches involve overexposed and vulnerable unstructured data - files, documents, and sensitive information. Below is a copy of the communication I received from Mr. Bob Lord - Yahoo's Chief Information Security Officer. ________________________________________________

Dear Paul,

We are writing to inform you about a data security issue that may involve your Yahoo account information. We have taken steps to secure your account and are working closely with law enforcement. What Happened? Law enforcement provided Yahoo in November 2016 with data files that a third party claimed was Yahoo user data. We analyzed this data with the assistance of outside forensic experts and found that it appears to be Yahoo user data. Based on further analysis of this data by the forensic experts, we believe an unauthorized third party, in August 2013, stole data associated with a broader set of user accounts, including yours. We have not been able to identify the intrusion associated with this theft. We believe this incident is likely distinct from the incident we disclosed on September 22, 2016. What Information Was Involved? The stolen user account information may have included names, email addresses, telephone numbers, dates of birth, hashed passwords (using MD5) and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers. Not all of these data elements may have been present for your account. The investigation indicates that the stolen information did not include passwords in clear text, payment card data, or bank account information. Payment card data and bank account information are not stored in the system we believe was affected. What We Are Doing We are taking action to protect our users: We are requiring potentially affected users to change their passwords. We invalidated unencrypted security questions and answers so that they cannot be used to access an account. We continuously enhance our safeguards and systems that detect and prevent unauthorized access to user accounts. What You Can Do We encourage you to follow these security recommendations: Change your passwords and security questions and answers for any other accounts on which you used the same or similar information used for your Yahoo account. Review all of your accounts for suspicious activity. Be cautious of any unsolicited communications that ask for your personal information or refer you to a web page asking for personal information. Avoid clicking on links or downloading attachments from suspicious emails. Additionally, please consider using Yahoo Account Key, a simple authentication tool that eliminates the need to use a password on Yahoo altogether. For More Information For more information about this issue and our security resources, please visit the Yahoo Security Issues FAQs page available at https://yahoo.com/security-update. Protecting your information is important to us and we work continuously to strengthen our defenses. Sincerely, Bob Lord Chief Information Security Officer Yahoo ______________________________________________ Well, what Yahoo is doing now is for the good of its users. In addition to it - I would also suggest: do not reveal any confidential matters with your Yahoo account information such as your bank information and your credit card information. About the Author Paul is a Web content creator, online marketer, products and services promoter, online writer and a Filipino blogger. He has no specific areas where his writing will focus on. He writes any subject that interests him under the merciless sun. He loves Internetting and Face-booking. His favorite saying: "Dream big and don't stop without giving it a chance to come true."