SeeCalifornia.com

SECURITY BREECHES:

In the past several years our online technology has failed us miserably. How many of you have been notified that you credit card was breeched? Millions of Americans have been affected by problems with companies unable to contain their private information. We follow all the rules on creating good passwords and yet nothing seems to stop the invasion!

Several months ago I was working on this website, SeeCalifornia.com and several I publish, only to see a big black screen with the message “HACKED” in dancing red letters like a devil. Millions of customers at this web hosting service all saw their websites turn to black with the message, HACKED. The hosting company apologized in an email to customers and spent lots of time shoring up their security methods. They should have done that sooner.

A few weeks ago LinkedIn sent out a message to users that their passwords were stolen, and that included each users’ email address. The hackers searched the emails supplied by users on LinkedIn accounts and broke into their personal or professional email accounts, as well, grabbing contacts and personal information. I began receiving hundreds of spam emails from people whose LinkedIn accounts were invaded–including myself.

Today it was announced that Yahoo has been hacked yet again–450,000 user email addresses and passwords were stolen from its user-generated content service, Yahoo! Voices. There are more vulnerabilities than what’s been anounced and even worse, all the passwords were stored unencrypted, or in “plaintext,” right out there for anyone to read, say reports.

So the next time you see an email from yourself that you didn’t send–don’t open it. As for complaining or reporting security breeches, have you ever tried to do so? Anyone who has tried to contact Yahoo will understand the futility of such efforts. Your friends will contact you and complain or lambaste you when they receive a spam email from you. But in most cases, you are not to blame.  You are simply a victim of the breeches in security for the various services you are using.  It doesn’t look like things will be getting better any time soon. According to security analysts, they’re going to get worse.