There is an encryption flaw called the Heartbleed bug that is claimed to be one of the most dangerous security threats to internet sites ever. It is said that is has affected some very popular sites and can potentially take personal information from users of certain sites, including credit card information.
Some sites, including Facebook are unclear of the bug may affect their site, but them and many other sites have put a security patch on their sites in order to prevent the bug from doing any damage. Sites are also telling people they will need to change their password in order to make their information more secure. This is more of a precautionary measure, as sites have told their customers that hackers could already have their information, citing that this bug could have existed for up to two years.
This seems pretty scary to think about, because you obviously would have no idea if someone was trying to take your information with how good hackers can be nowadays. It is definitely a best practice to change your password once in awhile and also to not use the same password for multiple sites.
Lucky for us, credit card companies are very good at detecting fraud and will refund their customers if there is an unknown charge. Hopefully the security patches are good enough to eliminate this bug for good.
I heard about this Heartbleed bug just yesterday and it honestly worries me very much. While my bank will refund me and whatnot, I still don't like the idea that someone can get into my online bank account or my Amazon account and just take my debit card information like that. Not only that, but any and all access to my social media accounts and they can see where I've been and who I've been with. I'm definitely in the process of changing all my passwords and keeping an eye on things.
ReplyDeleteAnd if hackers can think of things like this, who knows what they'll come up with in the future?