Time for a security healthcheck

[BlueberryMuff]

I was notified of an attempted login to a random old Facebook and Gmail account. I created these over 10 years ago for whatever reason and never used them, forgot they existed.

The Facebook account had a fake name, which was a random username I made up at the time. The gmail was only created for that fb account and one other site that was breached, so the password is freely available for it online.

Interesting part: I namechanged on here a couple of months ago and used that same username as it popped into my head.

It is surely no coincidence that someone attempts to hack it after being dormant for 10 years?

I've only really used that name on fwr so I would caution you that this board is being scraped and usernames investigated elsewhere on the Web. That is likely obvious to many of you. Make sure to stay safe online and maintain your anonymity. Think carefully about the names you use and details that may be linked across the Web that can be used to find the real you.

Scary :( Thanks for highlighting.

I name change regularly which is such a shame, especially at the moment.

But been on here many years and know the drill. :(

Yes it is a shame, I like feeling like I've got to know certain characters on here! This is a namechange just for this post!

It is a cool feature though so thanks mumsnet

I assume that posters regularly name change, but it is a shame because you lose things as the identity changes, eg knowing someone is a doctor/lawyer etc. Scary that we need to :-(

Thanks for the reminder Blueberry

Ahh name change coming on I think

Thanks for the warning, OP. I namechanged after a raid on the NZ site, in case the same people attacked Mumsnet. I suppose we have to make security-consciousness part of everyday life.

It's worth spelling out what needs to be done for dopes like me! Please? I'm not great at putting things together /thinking things through at the moment (shocking brain fog).

Do you go through all your accounts and change the passwords?

Or do you need to change email address too?

Walnuts it is definitely worth regularly changing passwords on anything that matters to you (email, bank account etc). I know plenty of people use ‘burner’ emails on here, so if the site is hacked, their email & identity isn’t compromised.
Don’t know if it helps to regularly change your Mumsnet account password - hopefully someone more knowledgeable will comment

Don’t know if it is possible to find an (setup) IP address through a Mumsnet account or through an otherwise unused email

Thank you. Perhaps I need a full think. I changed my MN email address away from one that had my name in it. Maybe I should just set up a new account with burner emails.

I don't think anyone would be interested in me, but I guess we could get caught up in some kind of automated mischief.
Hmm.

A good site to check your various email addresses is haveibeenpwned.com/

It will tell you if sites you've used an email to sign up with have had a security breach and whether they got passwords and personal information. You can go through and update passwords etc.

The best thing to do is set up a new email address with a password you never use anywhere else - a different one for each of your online accounts especially discussion boards, twitter, Facebook. It is a pain but necessary especially for activists and politicians. Those of you who are should be using a vpn as well. The rest of us dont need to worry too much about vpns if we arent public personas.

There was a recent hack which exposed twitter accounts to names and email addresses. Avoid using personal info on these platforms - ever. Or if you have to for work, keep it well away from anon political accounts and online discussion.

I cycle thru usernames regularly, so no personal info can be linked elsewhere. I recommend keeping your FWR username separate from any other areas of the board.

I nc regularly and it's probably time I do so again.

Thanks for the warning.

What absolute nobbers.

As you can tell, my name is topically new.

I dunno why they bother though, when we’ve dug about in their dirty laundry (publicly available info only! No attempted hacking!) we’ve found all sorts of awfulness, including convictions for sex offences.

Unsuprisingly, they haven’t found anything of the sort about us - the closest they got was that dodgy lesbian porn star, and clearly she’s not one of us because we’re not just terfy, but also ‘swerfy’.