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Wednesday, December 15, 2010

(W) Warning for anyone that has a Gawker / LifeHacker account, your password has been stolen ,







For those that use and read any of the Gawker websites like one of my favorites LifeHacker, if you have an account to post comments or other login, your account password has been compromised!!!!

The websites affected include:

Lifehacker, Gizmodo, Gawker, Jezebel, io9, Jalopnik, Kotaku, Deadspin and Fleshbot.

The threat?

Many people, i'm not one of them, use the same password for multiple website accounts, yes we call this 'The Cloud'. This means if you use the same password for a Gawker website as your Facebook or Twitter account... The bad guys are already logging into to these stolen accounts and trying to steal or gain data from your other sites and accounts that you used the same password for.

How do I avoid this threat?

My last post was on passwords and either SuperGenPass or LastPass have a random generator that allows each website to have a unique password and you only have to remember your main passphrase which either generates the real password (SuperGenPass) or enters the remembered password like LastPass.

How do I know if I have a Gawker account?

The are a couple websites that allow you to lookup your Email that was used as your account and see if Gawker reports it. If your email address does show up, your password and Gawker account are now well know to the Ne'er-do-wellers and no longer under your control or private.

Look them up now !!!

ComputerWorld article with instructions

Slate website with simple email address check