Attack on eBay prompts advice over password changes

Friday, May 23, 2014 - 12:19 by Simon Crisp

Auction site, eBay, has become the latest e-commerce retailer to be impacted by cybercriminal activities, with a recent attack carried out on one of its databases leading to the theft of data relating to user passwords, according to the Express.

As a result of this incident, eBay is now advising all of its customers to change their account passwords as soon as possible. And given that this encompasses 128 million people, 14 million of whom live in the UK, this is a significant chunk of the global population with internet access.

The good news is that people do not need to worry about whether or not their financial details are safe, because eBay revealed in a statement that the hack did not affect any data of this kind.

It is still important to reset and change your existing password, to prepare for any fallout from the theft, which is thought to have occurred in either February or March of this year.

It is worth pointing out that the data which the criminals took was encrypted, so whether or not they were even able to break this protective layer of code is unknown.

Part of enjoying shopping online is about having a good password as a consumer. And in ideal circumstances, you should endeavour to use a different password for each of the retail sites that you use.

The benefit of having multiple passwords is that if one site?s security is compromised, you will not have to worry about these details being used to log into other services.

The issues eBay has encountered this year are not unusual and even companies which have a track record of ensuring that customers can carry out safe shopping online, could be susceptible to similar intrusions.