If you receive an email from eBay later today asking you to change your password, you should definitely take their advice. The company has just confirmed a cyberattack that may have affected millions of users, exposing personal information like usernames, passwords, and email addresses.
As the result of an ongoing investigation, eBay learned that a “small number” of employee login credentials had been compromised, giving attackers access to their corporate network. The database that was breached contained names, encrypted passwords, email addresses, physical addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth–but eBay is claiming that no financial information was ever at risk.
They also say that they’ve found no evidence that the hack led to any sort of unauthorized access.
“[There is] no evidence of the compromise resulting in unauthorized activity for eBay users, and no evidence of any unauthorized access to financial or credit card information, which is stored separately in encrypted formats,” said eBay.
Still, eBay is asking every user to change their password, and any other shared passwords for other services. If you’re an eBay user, you’ll most likely receive an email later in the day on Wednesday.
Though eBay is saying that there’s no evidence that PayPal user info has been compromised, it was PayPal that “broke” the news earlier today. A post appeared on the PayPal community blog that simply read “eBay Inc To Ask All eBay Users To Change Passwords”–that’s it. There was no text accompanying that headline.
Of course, with just that little snippet to go on, there was a little bit of panic from some users on social media. PayPal quickly pulled the post, and a couple of hours later eBay officially confirmed the cyberattack.
“Information security and customer data protection are of paramount importance to eBay Inc., and eBay regrets any inconvenience or concern that this password reset may cause our customers. We know our customers trust us with their information, and we take seriously our commitment to maintaining a safe, secure and trusted global marketplace,” said eBay in a statement.
Image via Wikimedia Commons
