Yahoo 2014 hack much worse than expected

Yahoo, which suffered a hack attack in 2014, that was much worse than expected, described the hacking as a ''state-sponsored attack''.

Yahoo claimed more than 500 million accounts had been affected.

Affected Yahoo users would get a mail from Yahoo where they would be asked to update their password and registered mobile number. But even those not affected would  need to protect their account.

The first and easiest step would be to update their account details, and more importantly change the password. Passwords had almost been taken for granted and even the likes of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg had learned about the vulnerabilities of password protected accounts the hard way.

According to commentators, a strong password included uppercase, lowercase letters, symbols and numbers.

Users also need to include at least eight characters, and not include any commonly used phrase. Users worried about forgetting complex passwords they had created for different accounts could use apps like Keeper, LastPass, Dashlane that helped save all their  passwords in one place, which are further protected by a password.

This would allow them to remember only one password, which would give them access to all their other stored passwords.

While news of a hack might worry users over compromised photos, leaked information and such stuff, the fact remained, however, that the average person was among millions, say some commentators.

They point out that for a hacker to specifically target a particular user was just too arduous a task, unless the hacker had a good reason to so.

The bottomline was that the average person was not significant to a hacker. Though one's information might have been breached, unless it was much more important than that of everyone else and the hackers knew about it and wanted it, their personal information was relatively safe.