Yahoo! Issues notice of data breach including St Augustine

Historic City News has been alerted by Internet technology provider, Yahoo, Inc., one of the world’s largest and oldest providers of free email services, that confidential account identification data has been illegally obtained from its customer database — including customers in St Augustine.

The stolen user account information on as many as one billion users 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.

“In November 2016, law enforcement provided Yahoo 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,” wrote Bob Lord, Chief Information Security Officer.

What you can do to protect your Yahoo! account:

• 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 any 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 about this issue and additional security resources, visit the Yahoo Security Issues FAQs page https://yahoo.com/security-update.