A new name can be added to the list of companies who have been hacked this year: Yahoo!. If you know anyone with a Yahoo! account, there’s a chance you recieved a strange e-mail from them recently. More than 450,000 username and passwords were compromised in the breach.

 

According to Wired.com, the group responsible released a statement on their reasoning:

“We hope that the parties responsible for managing the security of this subdomain will take this as a wake-up call, and not as a threat. There have been many security holes exploited in Web servers belonging to Yahoo Inc. that have caused far greater damage than our disclosure. Please do not take them lightly. The subdomain and vulnerable parameters have not been posted to avoid further damage.”

Experts say many people take dangerous shortcuts in setting up their passwords online, including simple names, words or numbers. They recommend using symbols, upper and lowercase letters and numbers.

Here are some guidelines for creating a password:

Change your password often — every 90 days is the standard
Keep the length to eight characters or more
Substitute symbols for letters or numbers. C@t@nd7h2H@t (Cat and the hat)
Intentionally misspell a word (Superamin, B@tmyn)
Avoid anything you can find in the dictionary (in any language)
Avoid words spelled backwords and common abreviations
Don’t user personal information (such as birthday, anniversary, driver’s license number, etc…)
Use at least one number, symbol and lower case/upper case letter.
Use a DIFFERENT password for each account (if one account gets hacked, they wont all be left vulnerable).
Unsure?  Click here to test yours at the Microsoft Password Strength Checker.