For anyone that’s not yet checked their email or stumbled on the news, Kickstarter notified their users via direct email and their blog in the small hours of Sunday morning Australian time that they had been the victim of a security breach. There’s some good and some bad news in this; the good news is that your credit card details are safe!
The bad news, “authorities” notified Kickstarter of the breach which means they can’t have had any proactive monitoring in place to detect such breaches. The post from Kickstarter states:
While no credit card data was accessed, some information about our customers was. Accessed information included usernames, email addresses, mailing addresses, phone numbers, and encrypted passwords. Actual passwords were not revealed, however it is possible for a malicious person with enough computing power to guess and crack an encrypted password, particularly a weak or obvious one.
Understandably given the data they know has been compromised is now out there, the recommendation from Kickstarter (to protect your own privacy and account with them) is to change your password at the first possible opportunity.
How do you keep you passwords safe? Share your expertise with the Ausdroid community
I use 10 char passwords which all have lower and upper case and symbols and numbers. Different logins have different passwords but i do use a sort of formula which helps me remember each one.
But even having long passwords like this doesn’t help, they’re still very crackable according to the experts. I like the way PayPal lets you login by sending a code to your mobile as well as needing a password.
Password length is a critical feature, even if your password consists of upper and lower case letters, numbers and other characters. This is something most people forget in the desire to have passwords they can remember.
Password length is a critical feature, even if your password consists of upper and lower case letters, numbers and other characters. This is something most people forget in the desire to have passwords they can remember.