It's time to change your Yahoo password - and perhaps consider a new email provider - following the company's confirmation that over a billion user accounts were breached by an "unauthorized third party" back in August...of 2013.
The timing is especially poor (though we guess there isn't exactly a good time to be hacked) following Yahoo's announcement back on September of this year that a separate security breach back in 2014 compromised at least half a billion accounts.
Though both egregious events are similar, Yahoo believes the incident back in September "is likely distinct" from the one it just disclosed.
According to Yahoo, the attack appears to have been the work of forged cookies - software saved to a browser normally used to track user information and preferences while surfing the web - but the investigation is still ongoing.
What was taken?
Yahoo also states that the information nabbed from the billion accounts could contain data ranging from names, emails, phone numbers, birthdates, hashed passwords, and in some cases, security questions and answers.
It appears that payment and bank account information were not included in the list of data compromised by the breach, but we'll just go ahead and say that you should always be ever-vigilant of your finances following situations like these.
What should I do?
Yahoo claims to have taken the steps to work with directly affected users and secure their accounts, but urge all users to follow the usual steps one takes when these things happen: change your passwords, revise your security questions, and keep an eye out for any suspicious activity on your account.
Yahoo has also posted a FAQ filled with information relevant to those who may be affected or our just curious to learn more. For example, any users of Yahoo's latest acquisition, Tumblr, can take it easy as seemingly no data from the blogging service was compromised.
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