233 million eBay users were told last night to change all of their passwords amid fears their personal data might have been stolen in a major cyber attack.
The online marketplace said a database had been hacked between late February and early March, and had contained encrypted passwords, names, email, home addresses, phone numbers and dates of birth.
Cyberattackers compromised a small number of employee log-in credentials, allowing unauthorised access to eBay's corporate network, the company said. Working with law enforcement and leading security experts, the company is aggressively investigating the matter and applying the best forensics tools and practices to protect customers.
The company told all of its 233 million customers urgently to change not only their eBay passwords but also those for any other accounts with the same password.
eBay stressed that there was currently no evidence to suggest that there was any unauthorised or fraudulent activity on any its users’ accounts.
Follow our advice to help create a strong password
- Use at least eight characters, the longer the password the more secure it is likely to be.
- Use a random mixture of characters, upper and lower case, numbers, punctuation, spaces and symbols.
- Change your passwords often. Set an automatic reminder for yourself to change your passwords on your email, banking, and credit card websites about every three months.
- Never use the same password twice.
- Don't use a word found in a dictionary, English or foreign.
For further information visit the eBay website.
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To report a fraud and receive a police crime reference number, call Action Fraud on 0300 123 2040 or use our online fraud reporting tool.