News is emerging that PayPal + eBay were readying a statement to advise all customers to change their password. Reports on Business Insider + Yahoo! News indicate that a statement was put together and then taken down.
(Reuters) – EBay Inc issued a notice on its websites asking users to change their passwords, but took down the message a short time later without explanation.
The message, on its PayPal online payment unit’s press and community website pages, did not say why passwords needed to be changed.
EBay and PayPal representatives were not immediately available for comment on the notice issued at 1:30 a.m. ET, which was previously reported by tech blog Engadget (http://r.reuters.com/zef59v).
The message headline was “eBay Inc. To Ask All eBay Users To Change Passwords” but had no other information other than the words “place holder text”.
No replacement message was issued on the PayPal site. The link to the notice was replaced with one reading “The message you are trying to access is not available.” (http://r.reuters.com/gaf59v)
Reuters could not immediately verify if the website was hacked or if the message was posted in error.
Our recommendation:
Don’t wait for an official announcement – login to both PayPal + eBay and change your passwords now – make sure they’re DIFFERENT – and use a password manager and STRONG, RANDOM passwords. We use “keePass” -which is a FREE password manager. This program allows us to setup multiple databases, store them in the cloud and have access to them on our desktops, laptops, and phones + tablets (using a paid app for cloud-drive access). The KeePass application is FREE at http://keepass.info/