It was rather big news when earlier this week, it became known that up to 5 million Gmail usernames and their corresponding passwords were published over at a Russian Bitcoin forum. Google has continued to maintain that they have strong reason to believe that the security breach was none of their fault, but this does not mean that Gmail users should continue using the very same password as though nothing had changed. Automattic, the company that operates hosted blogging service WordPress.com, has taken the route of “better safe than sorry” to reveal that pre-emptive measures have been taken in order to secure thousands of its own accounts – and this is done by resetting 100,000 accounts which use a similar password as that found on the associated Gmail addresses.
Automatic’s Daryl Houston explained, “We also sent email notification of the password reset containing instructions for regaining access to the account.”
As a matter of fact, the ones who were affected were required to Login over at the homepage and make a request for a new password. Whatever the case is, one should always take the necessary precaution not to use a similar password across a range of different online services, regardless of how much more convenient it is.