Many of you might have received mail from Yahoo with subject “Important security information for Yahoo users” containing details about hacking that stole your information in August 2013.
What information was involved?
The stolen user account information may have included
- names
- email addresses
- telephone numbers
- dates of birth
- hashed passwords (using MD5)
and, in some cases, encrypted or unencrypted security questions and answers. Not all of these data elements may have been present for your account. The investigation indicates that the stolen information did not include passwords in clear text form.
Now to secure your account all you need to do is to login to your Yahoo account with your correct password and change that with new password.
Once you have changed the password you can add extra security by enabling two step verification.
Click on your mail id on right top and then click on account info. You’ll be presented with set of options like the screenshot below. Choose Account security and add the mobile number if you’ve still not added one.
Once Mobile is added you can enable two step verification. With this you’ll receive a One Time Code whenever you login to your yahoo account from a new unknown machine. You can send verification code to your mobile and enter that to access your mail inbox.
This way no body can login to your Yahoo mail account even if hacked your userid & password. Two step verification keeps your mail account & private data most secured.
