Over 30 Million Twitter Users’ Records Stolen But Probably Not From Twitter Servers

You may have received an email from Twitter about your account being at risk due to a compromise they say didn’t originate from their servers. The Wall Street Journal reported that database containing nearly 33 million purported usernames and passwords for the social-blogging service was made public Wednesday. Twitter was quick to confirm that the number could be an accumulation of past hacks of individual computers of Twitter users. They are not also ruling our third party applications who use these details for sign up on their websites. But this just reminds us of the LinkedIn 2012 breach which LinkedIn has now said they didn’t know the magnitude at the time until now that over 100 million LinkedIn account records were now being sold.

This is the latest in the hack series of social media databases. What usually happens is that hackers steal this information and then sell them on the dark web for outrageous prices. Let’s take a look at some breaches that have made headlines this year alone;

We start with the probably the biggest of them; MySpace. We reported that MySpace that accounts created prior to June 11, 2013 may have been compromised. The  database contained about 360 million accounts with 427 million passwords and now they are asking people to change their passwords as well.

LinkedIn is next in line because of the scale and amount of time it took them to realise this. Over 100 million accounts were compromised and now they have asked users to change their passwords which is usually the first line of action when it comes to informing users.

The Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s personal social media accounts on Twitter and Pinterest were compromised last week which has prompted Twitter to suspend the account.

These are just some of the biggest names even as the website that has been publishing these accounts on the dark web now says they have over 1.8 billion records including those of prominent Russian sites.

If you’re reading this, you might want to change your Twitter password and do that frequently enough even as continue to  step up security. Just about all to internet based companies with large amounts of user data have started considering end-to-end encryption which they believe would step of public confidence in their services.

Last month we had reported that there was a new “tech Support” scheme in town which passes on a malicious code to your system which eventually locks you out of your computer and what follows is somebody somewhere asking you to pay a certain fee to solve this for you. It’s all part of  new ways hackers now access your information. It all usually starts with clicking on an unknown link on some website and that’s all they need to make life difficult for you.

Since Twitter claims this didn’t originate from their servers, you don’t have much to worry about. All you need to do is change your password and see if you can do this probably every three months. Do not share your passwords with people you don’t trust and even if you trust them, hackers could steal your information without them knowing from their own devices. Most importantly, mind the way you click on links from other websites especially if they are sites that look suspicious.