Mumsnet Data Breach - FAQs

[JustineMumsnet]

As lots of the same queries re the data breach are reappearing we've made an FAQs page Do let us know if there's anything important we've left off. We'll keep updating this document as soon as we have further any further info. Thanks.

EDITED BY MNHQ AT 17.15 ON FEBRUARY 8: We're now as sure as we can be that the total number of accounts affected by this breach was 46. We will be contacting these users within the next hour or so.

@LynetteScavo

Your previous usernames will no longer be associated with your email address once you deregister

@JustineMumsnet
@YetAnotherBeckyMumsnet

Does this mean if I deregister my user names will be up for grabs?

Honestly, this is so crap, after 11 years I'm not sure I want to be registered any more. I need to know the answer to the above question.

No it doesn't mean that Lynette - if you deregister no one can use your usernames. They remains in our system just not associated with any data.

Matt this definitely is an issue, my short list of name changes now goes off the page, with triplicates and quadruplicated....

So I just had a look at my username history. It duplicates the name I most commonly use, but it also adds a name I have never used by adding a capital letter at the start.

And when I search posts by the name I have never used with a capital at the start, it takes me to posts by my most commonly used under name with no capital.

User, not under.

I often get an email telling me that someone has mentioned me on a thread, but when I go there it isn't me. I thought it was a weird quirk but I am thinking it might not be now

Is it not that another user name is similar to yours and some people use a shortening that is your actual poster name - past or present? So if you were called 'poster' and someone else is called 'posterposter' anyone @ them as just 'poster' means you get the email.

@JustineMumsnet Thank you got clarifying that.

MattFreis and Smotheroffive, my user name list is the same as yours. From the previous alphabetical order, it is now off the page with each name listed chronologically.

Similar to you I chop and change between NNs for specific subjects - or might revert to an older NN to reply to an 'old friend' in the name they know me - my list looks crazy now. But, basically it must be the spreadsheet on each time I change my NN.

Fortunately I haven't 'gained' any strange NNs, nor do I seem to have lost any of mine - AFAIK.

@JustineMumsnet Thank you also for your post at 15:43. That is the kind of clear, honest explanation posters need to hear.

Is it not that another user name is similar to yours and some people use a shortening that is your actual poster name - past or present? So if you were called 'poster' and someone else is called 'posterposter' anyone @ them as just 'poster' means you get the email

Not even close to my username. I've had it happen several times and the usernames are literally nothing like mine or like each others.

@Hank, not sure if it was clear, but my concern is that my username list and what it contains has now changed 3 times, from:

• 'normal' (everything listed once)

to:

• normal plus current (as above, listed alphabetically, plus current name duplicated elsewhere in list), which happened at about the time of the software glitch

to:

• everything I've ever been called listed chronologically with repeats (which has only just happened).

Normally I wouldn't care or probably even notice, but under the circumstances anything that hints at instability in the data stored about site users is of concern. Like a lot of other people, I have mainly thought in terms of preserving my anonymity here behind serial name changes, and this is a bit of a wake-up call about how sensitive and identifiable that data is if not held securely. I read the original stickied thread with a certain amount of impatience at the panicky tone, but 5 days on there still seems to be a high degree of uncertainty coming out of @MNHQ about what on the site has altered, by what means, and with what result. Any update, MNHQ?

Now I'm being blocked from changing my password, on the basis that the password I'm giving as my current one is incorrect. (I know it isn't - I had to use it to log back in after the forced logout.)

Is the site basically broken at the moment? I'm not being sarcastic. Genuinely I'm wondering if the software is just overloaded with glitches and it's pointless trying to get anything done right now?

This is what I've been sayingMatt there is more going on as made clear by the random issues that users are post in, anomalies, caused by the system update that been reversed, but hasn't. There is system unreliability and instability showing through in posts of users experiences.

MN are sticking to the main issue of simultaneous logins. The missing original generic email!? Now superseded by the updated one. There are anomalies, new ones, as you have also experienced

I have had emails saying I've been @ mentioned when I haven't and it's because I once had a username say “John” so I get a message everyone someone wrongly @ mentions “JohnSmith”, “JohnandJane”, “johnworksdownthechipshop” as just “John” could that be what's happening for others?

That's unavoidable.

That would be a massive work overload if that's happening caught especially when you consider how difficult it is to get a new name, even in numbers or variations on newusername. All user names are very close to being derivatives of another?!!

I'm sure I heard a request over the last few days @JustineMumsnet ?

Maybe I haven't explained it very well smother, what I was trying to say is that if a poster abbreviates the name of another poster in an @ mention and a 3rd poster happens to have the user name that is the abbreviation the 3rd poster gets the email saying they've been mentioned.

So if I type @ smother (left a space just in case) when I want to mention you and there is another poster whose name is "smother" they get the email not you

Only 1 email is sent but to the wrong person. That's to be expected imo

All my previous names have gone. Only this one is listed

Oh look gloating on Twitter and suggestion that lots of trans ppl work in IT so it may have been an inside job.

Well that's really grown up and clever of them. They really cannot stop being nasty and underhanded can they?

Oh yes, I see, I didn't know posters would use anything other than the actual name for an email, or it makes sense that so done else would get the email !!. Thanks for explaining caught

Also factually incorrect

Hardly worth sharing given the lack of support it got

@WatcherOfTheNight

I'm sure I heard a request over the last few days *@JustineMumsnet* ?

Thank you!