Signal Boost: [public] PSA for Livejournal users (and many on Dreamwidth): You can be deanonymized

[highlyeccentric]

squirrelitude posted: [public] PSA for Livejournal users (and many on Dreamwidth): You can be deanonymized

Livejournal was hacked in 2014. Someone managed to download a list of all users, and has posted it on the web. (I'm not telling exactly where, for reasons that will become clear.) It contains over 30 million records with email addresses, usernames, and raw passwords.

You know what to do when your password is leaked: You change it to something new, something you haven't used anywhere else, something complicated. Maybe you store it in a password manager so you don't have to remember it. And check to see if you used it anywhere else, especially on Dreamwidth.

But this is worse: Your email address is now linked to the usernames of any accounts you created with that email. Here are some scenarios:

Ah. LJ is (98% certainly) the 'another social media service' that isn't admitting it. Cool. Cool. I used different email addresses for each of my LJs, but I think they crossed over (like, the address for my fandom lj wasn't thatusername at gmail, it was otherusername and so on in in criss-cross).

H/T liv for the heads up.

Comments

[jjhunter]

Wow, I'm so glad I switched usernames in transitioning from LJ to DW.

[muccamukk]

I know "I miss LJ" is kind of a meme with fandom olds, but MAN. I think we mean "I miss LJ when we were all on a first-name basis with the Dev."

[highlyeccentric]

Sometimes think when they say that they mean "I miss when the posting architecture meant people's circles were relatively discrete". Which... there were advantages (a LOT of advantages, say, to the fact that your average 'likes to look at pretty pictures of LOTR actors' didn't regularly run into kinky homoerotic art and fiction - i say this having made the transition from one set to the other). But also I think a lot of the i-miss-LJ folk forget how much time on LJ, especially in that overlap between feminist blogs, rl sex/kink blogs, and fandom, people did actually spend policing each other's stuff and passing around links to posts they disapproved of, and so on.

[muccamukk]

Ha, yeah. I think you and I met when I made a post going "Remember how wanky LJ was!?" in face of all the nostalgia. Though I'm also just talking on my own blog about how much people mean different things when they say LJ Fandom, but seem to assume everyone had the same or even similar experiences.

That said, I do think Anne's post about how the reblog/lack of privacy filters fundamentally changed fandom is also true: https://anneapocalypse.dreamwidth.org/170431.html

[highlyeccentric]

Yes, that's sort of what I was thinking of re "circles less overlapping".

[malinaldarose]

Well. That would explain why my credit monitoring service alerted me that my email address was floating about and that it was becuase of LJ and why I got an email from said email service telling me that I should really change my password. Maybe I should just go ahead and delete that account. I haven't cross-posted in years, and I don't read LJ anymore....