Scribd Hacked

[Wandering Author]

The official story is that affected users were notified. I’m sure they tried to do that. But if you use Scribd, I’d suggest, unless you have a very strong password (and perhaps even if you do) that you pick a new password anyway. Doing that is a very brief inconvenience. Finding out your account was affected but you somehow missed the notification would presumably be a much greater inconvenience.

Also, especially if you are one of the affected users, and if you follow the very dangerous practice of using the same password on more than one site – change all of them! Now. Because if you use the same password, you probably also use the same username. And every cracker on the planet, once they get details like this, will have a bot run a check against sites and services you probably don’t even know exist. Whenever it finds a match, they can take over that account…

I know that probably sounds paranoid to some of you. I’ve spent some time hanging out in an online community with coders who know a lot more than I do – and almost every single one of them thinks I’m not nearly paranoid enough. Obviously, I can’t force any of you to do anything, and I’m not even trying to. But I am trying to explain what can happen. I know it’s a pain in the, ah, rear. I spend far too much time wrestling with various crap that has infected someone’s computer when they got careless or one of their online accounts got cracked and provided an ‘in’. I wish every creep who writes malware or cracks other people’s systems would – well, that very bad things would happen to them. :angry: But, sadly, they’re not going away. And a breach like this one can cause trouble for those affected for years afterward if they’re not very, very careful.

[crimson_angel]

I am not a Scribd user, but I appreciate the reminder about passwords. You can never be too safe or paranoid.

[Author]

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