News that pornbots have hijacked more than 2,500 legitimate Twitter accounts, including verified users, is another unnerving reminder that we should all probably take our online security more seriously.
From Twitter to LinkedIn, Adobe and, of course, the infamous Ashley Madison, hackers are capable of breaching pretty much anything that exists on the interwebs these days.
In the latest example, the Twitter accounts of some 2,500 users – including high-profile figures such as musicians, sports stars, and journalists – have been commandeered and replaced with pornbots.
That’s the word from security firm Symantec, which revealed the micro-blog break-in.
But while we all know that the first step to improving our online security is to have a diverse array of robust passwords, many of us still fall into the “it probably won’t happen to me” trap and use overly simplistic phrases (“password123” anyone?) or rely on the same safeguard over and over again.
Related: How to make better passwords
If this applies to you – I’m certainly among those who should take a long, hard look in the digital mirror – and you want help snapping out of your inertia, there’s a web tool that will tell you if you’ve been hacked.
Called Have I Been Pwned?, it’s the work of security researcher and Microsoft employee Troy Hunt. Set up in the wake of the massive Adobe data dump back in 2013, it evolved into a breach notification service and, now, has added the ability to search to see if you’ve ever been hacked.
Just key in your email address to the site’s embedded search engine and get ready for the worst – when I tried it out, I discovered that I had indeed been “pwned” in the Adobe hack.
It’s not completely comprehensive, of course, but it covers most of the major breaches that have come to light in recent years.
Maybe, it will be the wake up call you’ve been waiting for.
Are you guilty of lax online security? Have you been hacked? Let us know your experiences in the comments below.
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Editorial independence
Editorial independence means being able to give an unbiased verdict about a product or company, with the avoidance of conflicts of interest. To ensure this is possible, every member of the editorial staff follows a clear code of conduct.
Professional conduct
We also expect our journalists to follow clear ethical standards in their work. Our staff members must strive for honesty and accuracy in everything they do. We follow the IPSO Editors’ code of practice to underpin these standards.
