It has been reported that over 32 million Twitter logins and passwords have been put up for sale online.

A hacker is allegedly asking for £4,000 from anyone that wants to copy the list of usernames up for grabs.

It is not yet clear whether the list is genuine or how it has been compiled. In a statement, Twitter said it was “confident” that the data did not emerge from a breach of its network.

A website which has built a database of login data that has been stolen or leaked said the dataset shared with it by the hacker contained 32,888,300 records – each one listed an email address, username and password.

It is understood that Twitter is directly contacting affected users who are on this list.

However, it is still advised that users change their Twitter password –  as well as for any other accounts which share the same, or similar, password – as a precaution. In any case, it is best to change your passwords on a regular basis, and to have as many separate passwords for each of your online accounts. That way even if one account does get hacked, your other accounts should remain safe.

Information about how to create a safe password has been covered in a previous Safe In Warwickshire blog post.

For further information regarding this story, read the BBC News article here.

 

For more information about our work, please visit www.safeinwarwickshire.com/cybercrime

Be Cyber Streetwise is a cross-government campaign, funded by the National Cyber Security Programme. They aim to measurably and significantly improve the online safety behaviour and confidence of consumers and small businesses (SMEs).

Get Safe Online is the UK’s leading source of factual and easy-to-understand information on online safety. Their website offers advice on how you can protect yourself, your computers and devices, and your business against the likes of fraud, identity theft, viruses and other potential online problems.