The Heartbleed Hit List: The Passwords You Need to Change Right Now
The Heartbleed Hit List: The Passwords You Need to Change Right Now:
The Heartbleed Hit List: The Passwords You Need to Change Right Now
An encryption flaw called the Heartbleed bug
is already being called one of the biggest security threats the
Internet has ever seen. The bug has affected many popular websites and
services — ones you might use every day, like Gmail and Facebook — and
could have quietly exposed your sensitive account information (such as
passwords and credit card numbers) over the past two years.
But it hasn't always been clear which sites have been affected. Mashable
reached out some of the most popular social, email, banking and
commerce sites on the web. We've rounded up their responses below.
Some Internet companies that were vulnerable to the bug have already
updated their servers with a security patch to fix the issue. This means
you'll need to go in and change your passwords immediately for these
sites. Even that is no guarantee that your information wasn't already compromised,
but there's also no indication that hackers knew about the exploit
before this week. The companies that are advising customers to change
their passwords are doing so as a precautionary measure.
Although changing your password regularly is always good practice, if
a site or service hasn't yet patched the problem, your information will
still be vulnerable.
Also, if you reused the same password on multiple sites, and one of
those sites was vulnerable, you'll need to change the password
everywhere. It's not a good idea to use the same password across
multiple sites, anyway.
We'll keep updating the list as new information comes in. Last update: April 11, 6:14 p.m. ET
It's time to update your passwords to various sites affected by the Heartbleed bug.
