May 27th 2014
In the wake of last week's hack of eBay's user data, the auction site is sending out emails to all of its users – including millions in the UK – instructing them to change their passwords, and explaining why. The text of the email is printed below.
The advice from us here at Get Safe Online is to change your password immediately, even if you aren't using the site at the moment.
Also, as is always the case in such situations, make sure any emails you receive are really from eBay and not hoax, phishing email containing a link or an attachment. There will undoubtedly be a spate of these from fraudsters exploiting the situation, and following their instructions could lead you to inadvertently revealing personal data or downloading malware of some description.
Here's the official email from eBay:
IMPORTANT: PASSWORD UPDATE
Dear eBay Member,
To help ensure customers' trust and security on eBay, I am asking all eBay users to change their passwords.
Here's why: Recently, our company discovered a cyberattack on our corporate information network. This attack compromised a database containing eBay user passwords.
What's important for you to know: We have no evidence that your financial information was accessed or compromised. And your password was encrypted.
What I ask of you:
Go to eBay and change your password. If you changed your password on May 21 or later, we do not need you to take any additional action at this time.
Changing your password may be inconvenient. I realize that. We are doing everything we can to protect your data and changing your password is an extra precautionary step, in addition to the other security measures we
have in place.
If you have only visited eBay as a guest user, we do not have a password on file.
If you used the same eBay password on any other site, I encourage you to change your password on those sites too. And if you are a PayPal user, we have no evidence that this attack affected your PayPal account or any
PayPal financial information, which is encrypted and stored on a separate secure network.
Here are other steps we are taking:
– As always, we have strong protections in place for both buyers and sellers in the event of any unauthorized activity on your account.
– We are applying additional security to protect our customers.
– We are working with law enforcement and leading security experts to aggressively investigate the matter.
Here's what we know: This attack occurred between late February and early March and resulted in unauthorized access to a database of eBay users that includes customers' name, encrypted password, email address,
physical address, phone number and date of birth.
However, the file did not contain financial information. And, after conducting extensive testing and analysis of our systems, we have no evidence that any customer financial or credit card information was involved. We also
have no indication of a significant spike in fraudulent activity on our site.
We apologize for any inconvenience or concern that this situation may cause you. As a global marketplace, nothing is more important to eBay than the security and trust of our customers. We know our customers have high
expectations of us, and we are committed to ensuring a safe and secure online experience for you on any connected device.
Devin Wenig
President, eBay Marketplaces
