CLEVELAND, Ohio — We've seen company, after company, even government agencies and small businesses hacked.
From credit card numbers to email addresses and passwords, it's usually our personal information that's been taken.
The fallout from some of those security breaches is starting to surface.
“You want to be cycling through passwords because if a breach happens with a certain target or Equifax, one of those, that information is out there so it’s best to keep it moving and stay a moving target versus using the same password from ten years ago and hope that nobody gets me.” Explains Kloud 9 IT Service Manager, Derek Schroeder.
Channel 3’s Tiffany Tarpley was recently the target of an attempt to hack her Facebook page. She immediately changed her password but days later noticed an email from “Save Yourself.”
The sender wrote her password and said her computer was affected with malware claiming it “gave me full access and control over your computer, meaning, I got to all your accounts.”
The email went on to say her private data was collected and “I can send the video to all of your contacts, post it on social network, publish it on the whole web, including the darknet…”
The sender was blackmailing her and demanding she pay using bitcoin to keep the information from being released.
“I wasn’t paying but I’ve done stories like this very often and I feel like I know what to do and yet I was wondering can they really see everything on my computer, she asks.”
Schroeder says you never know when someone has your account until you start seeing weird messages go out, “but in most cases this is just a very basic procedure where they’re going to send out a blanket email to a bunch of people and hope that one of the darts hits the board and that you reply.”
He suggests using password managers like LastPass and Dashlane to keep track of your passwords, using multi factor authentication with your accounts and changing your password often.