If you're a Yahoo Mail user,
you might want to be on the lookout for a password reset notification. Yahoo
has announced that it detected a "coordinated effort" to access some
email accounts.
In a post to the company's official blog, Yahoo's Jay
Rossiter explained that it did not appear that the attackers had breached Yahoo
servers to collect information, but rather had logged in to a number of
accounts using data collected from "a third party database."
That means that no one actually
broke in to Yahoo servers — the attackers were likely using usernames and
passwords that were stolen during some other leak of customer data, for example
Adobe or LivingSocial.
Yahoo didn't say how many
accounts were affected, but it is the second-largest webmail provider in the
world, with well over a quarter of a billion accounts, so if it were only a few
dozen accounts, it probably wouldn't receive this kind of attention from the
security team.
Anyone affected should have
received a text or email at a backup address saying their password has been
reset. If you didn't have a secondary mode of notification attached to your Yahoo
Mail account, try to log in — if your password works, you weren't affected (but
should probably change it just in case). If it didn't, you should contact Yahoo
and see about getting your access restored.
Devin Coldewey is a
contributing writer for NBC News Digital. His personal website is coldewey.cc.
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