Sunday, January 30, 2011

PSA: Change your old Amazon.com password for better security

Amazon's allegedly got an security flaw where hackers can find your password much easier than they would otherwise, and there's already a fix in place. But get this -- you'll probably need to change your password for the fix to take effect, if you haven't already done so in the last couple of years. According to Reddit users, the Amazon.com login system will actually accept any phrase so long as it begins with your password, such as "password123" when the magic word is simply "password" by itself. That apparently makes it that much easier for a computer to guess your password via brute force methods, no matter how counter-intuitive that seems, so if you simply change it immediately -- and to something other than "password," please -- you'll have much sounder dreams.

PSA: Change your old Amazon.com password for better security originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 30 Jan 2011 15:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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