3 social networking sites have been hacked and 8 million passwords published. So, I ask you MNHQ

[QuintessentialShadows]

Are we safe?

Are you encrypting, are you salting and hashing, etc?

Are your algorythms up to scratch, and can you tango the hackers away?
Are we firewalled and ringfenced, or are we in a bell tent in a gale?

I would hate to see Justine make announcements such as LinkedIn and Eharmony, and Last.fm has had to do.....

well, MN has been down twice tonight for "an update"

so, who knows...

I think Justine would surely hide under the bed and make Carrie do it. Or that poor Olivia wench. She gets all the crap jobs.

HRHOliviaMumsnet deserves needs more gin.

Zombie offers a bottle of Bombay Sapphire.

Jup, Olivia, she handles all the poo, poor lass.

No, Justine would never send lovely Olivia to the dogs like that (Arselick! :o) . A job for Tech if ever I saw one :o

If we've been hacked tech will be running for the hills with OF rucksack between teeth. It'll just be us against the mob. Better lay in canned goods.
I've got a few kit kats to spare if anybody's desperate?

One of the Linkedin passwords was I wish I was dead.

All the Mn ones will be fanjo, fruitshoot, Boden and norks.

my password is cuntworms, no one will never guess that!

....oh.....oops!

Generally it's a bad sign if you get your current password back (rather than a new password or a link to reset) when you do the "I forgot my password" thing.

And don't use the same password on sites that you think might be less secure as ou do on sites that you need not to be hacked. If someone hacked my mn account, they'd only be able to access a few other sites that I really don't care about. I mean that in the "being hacked would suck and might embarrass me but no real harm done" way. I know ideally to use a separate password on each site and I do for important stuff!

Oh shit, huge apologies for preachiness! I was something I was thinking about, so right there in my head.

I agree though. I only use my banking password for banking and nothing else, for example.

Well I have the same password for everything except banking and so does dp, so I'd be pretty fucked really. Have changed it now :)

Not sure that my MN password is that much of an issue.

When MN first started the passwords were just your RL surname. Took us an alarmingly long time to realise that once we'd made RL contact with another MNer we could guess their password .

Hi, A couple of things: Our downtime last night was because of an ongoing capacity issue which we are working on fixing. It wasn't anything more sinister than that.

As regards the other points, our servers are in secure data centres behind firewalls and with constant monitoring against intrusion and attack. We have an ongoing project to ensure we are in compliance with industry "best practises" around data security. At present your passwords are retrievable (by you) but we will change that over the next week or so to add another level of protection.

Of course TSSDNCOP (is that right?) in detail, but please be assured this is something we take seriously.

Just to reiterate, for your own security, it's definitely worth using different passwords for your various online accounts. You definitely shouldn't use the same password for your email and your banking and your MN-ing. (You absolutely shouldn't re-use your email or bank passwords for anything else at all of course.)

If you want to change your MN password, you can use our reset link here.

That's right. :) Well done.

I'm a bit bemused as to how useful my Linked-in account might actually be to someone, unless they are especially interested in my qualifications and what books I'm reading right now!

Told you they'd send Tech :)

Hi Biwi, one potential problem is that lots of people use the same password for the lots of accounts (kids names anyone?) So people who have access to your email address and linked in password from linked in will probably try those details to log in to various other places including your email itself.

Hmm - yes, they could also access my Twitter account I suppose. Good luck with that one!

.... but I have changed my password, anyway