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SALT LAKE CITY — Two different hackers claim to have broken into Mitt Romney's email, and hackers also say they've accessed the passwords of 6.5 million member of social media site LinkedIn, showing it can happen to anyone. Even Latino community leader Tony Yapias had his password stolen.
He said it ruined his whole morning Wednesday. Like a lot of us, he kept all of his contacts and emails on his laptop. Well when some kind of malicious software got in there, he found all his information was gone.
Yapias spent much of the first half of his day trying to put his life back together.
"They blanked it out. They just cleaned out everything," Yapias said.
He said he noticed something wrong last night and "within minutes, I started getting a call saying, 'Are you okay?'"
Some seemingly desperate emails were sent to dozens of his contacts, prompting responses like "Can we send you some money? What do you need?" The false messages sent from his account claimed that he had been mugged while on vacation in the UK, a common scam that some in the KSL newsroom received Wednesday morning as well.
"I am not in the UK. I'm here in salt lake, I'm doing fine," Yapias said.
Pete Ashdown, CEO of X-Mission internet, said most password security breaches can easily be avoided.
Most people will unfortunately choose passwords that are out of the dictionary, or they're common names. Those kinds of passwords are easily cracked.
–Pete Ashdown
"Most people will unfortunately choose passwords that are out of the dictionary, or they're common names," Ashdown said. "Those kinds of passwords are easily cracked."
Symbols and numbers can strengthen a password, but those aren't always easy to remember.
"The new strategy is to use grouped words," Ashdown said. "So if you take three random words, and say each word is five characters long..."
One online tool for testing your password strength is PasswordMeter.com.
Still, Ashdown said that computer security is important too. A firewall or an antivirus program is a must.
"If your computer gets hacked and they install a keylogger, all bets are off," Ashdown said.
That's how Yapias believes his passwords were stolen from three email accounts.
"Even when we think we're safe, it could happen to any of us," Yapias said. While those accounts are now being recovered, his thousands of contacts are still gone. He just hopes none of them fall for that email scam.
Contributing: Paul Nelson
