I received an email today from another forum I belong to advising me that Adobe have experienced a serious breach in security, have posted a copy below with the forum name removed. I have always felt uneasy with Adobe, they are constantly at you wanting to install updates etc. My main use was their reader to open .pdf files and Flash player.
Online safety and your Account
Adobe has recently announced they experienced a serious breach in the security of their site.
Our security team has since checked a list of millions of compromised Adobe accounts and cross referenced it with our records and we noticed that the email address you have used to register a ********account was on that list of exposed Adobe accounts.
As it is common for people to re-use the same password on many different websites, we thought that many users might be using the same details on.
While ********itself has not been compromised, we are recommending some precautionary tips:
Change your password, as well as any other accounts elsewhere that might use the same password.
Setting unique and hard-to-guess passwords is critical to online safety. You should avoid using the same password twice and the longer and more uncommon the combination of letters, numbers, and symbols, the harder it will be for your account and security to be compromised.
As always, if you have questions about your account, we are at the ready to help. You can contact us at http://******support.com/
Using alternative software to the "big" names can often avoid these traps. There are heaps of alternate pdf readers many of which offer a much wider range of options for handling pdf files. Alternatives to flash are more difficult to source for a range of reasons but they are available. If you want to source an alternative just type alternative to <application name> into a google search query. This will bring up a stack of hits including forum entries where the benefits or otherwise of the alternatives are discussed.
Bob, the hackers aren't expecting you to provide the information they are more than capable of extracting the information they want from online databases (such as Adobe or any other site were you have to register to access the information you want) without your permission and then using it for all sorts of reasons including onselling it to others. This has happened with diverse groups such as Sony (through the Playstation accounts) to your friendly neighborhood financial institution. My Mum's account bank account was hacked, she reported it, the bank cancelled her credit card to prevent further fraudulent activity and her new credit card was hacked before they even posted it to her. I don't know how they do it but if that creativity was diverted to something useful imagine what could be achieved!!!!