Photo-hosting service Imgur – a fan favourite for those who use social news site Reddit – has admitted that it suffered a large-scale hack back in 2014.
Imgur has confirmed the data breach does not include personal information because the hugely-popular site “never asked” for real names, addresses, or phone numbers.
The stolen accounts represent a small fraction of Imgur’s 150 million monthly users.
The successful photo-sharing website was unaware of the data breach until the stolen data was sent to security researcher Troy Hunt.
Within 24 hours of Hunt notifying Imgur about the breach, the San Francisco-based company had started to reset the passwords of affected accounts, and published a public statement alerting users of the breach.
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Hunt praised Imgur for its response.
“I disclosed this incident to Imgur late in the day in the midst of the US Thanksgiving holidays,” the renown security researcher told ZDnet.
“That they could pick this up immediately, protect impacted accounts, notify individuals and prepare public statements in less than 24 hours is absolutely exemplary.”
If you’re worried about the hack, it’s worth checking the website haveibeenpwned.
Run by security researcher Troy Hunt – the free database tracks online breaches and allows anyone to check whether their email address has been included in a publicly-available leak.
In this instance, you’ll need to enter your Imgur email addresses to see whether your account has been affected.
The site will tell you when the breach occurred and exactly what information was impacted.
You can also sign-up for alerts tied to any of your email addresses, so you will be notified as soon as another breach is picked up by the site.
Imgur users who use the same email address and password on any sites should change their password now.
On desktop, users should head to imgur.com and log in. Access your account settings by selecting your username in the upper righthand corner.
Then select Password & Email from the list of options on the left side. Type in your old password and what you’d like your new password to be and hit “Save”.
Those who want to reset their password on iOS and Android should open the Imgur app and tap on the profile button on the tab bar at the bottom of the screen.
Then, tap the cog icon in the top right to access Settings. Hit “Edit Profile” and then tap on Change Password.
You’ll be asked to put in your current password as well as what you want your new password to be. Tap “Done” and you’re all set!
Always create a unique password for every one of your online accounts.
For example, take the first letter of each word in your favourite song lyric, phrase or poem – and use those letters, which appear like a random jumble, as your password.
A password manager is another way to generate and securely store unique passwords with letters, symbols and numbers.