Yahoo Sued For Password Breach

twoheadedboy writes "Yahoo is being sued by one of its users, who has claimed the US Internet company was guilty of negligence when 450,000 passwords of the members of the Yahoo Voices blogging community were posted online. Jeff Allan from New Hampshire has turned to a federal court in San Jose, California, after his eBay account, which used the same password as his Voices account, was compromised. The breach at Yahoo followed similar hits on LinkedIn and Nvidia, which together saw millions of passwords leaked."

Comments

Guilty of Negligence

[O'Krap]

One could say that reusing a password is negligent....

Re:Guilty of Negligence

[Anonymous Coward]

But then one would be forced to be a complete idiot who implicitly stated that passwords were a good measure and that people have good enough memories and enough time on their hands to manage one unique strong password for every website they visit.

Luckily one wouldn't say that. (maybe you would though.)

Liability

[Malf.me]

Regrettably a liability lawsuit like this seems to be one of the only tools available to encourage large organizations to take computer security seriously.

TRWTF

[Anonymous Coward]

On the other hand, neither service X nor service Y should be storing your passwords in such a way that it is possible to recover the actual password.

Image of Trust

[Penurious Penguin]

Because Yahoo and other similar services pimp the image of being both sophisticated and virtually omnipotent, while offering to manage your affairs, organize your life, provide targeted news headlines and personal suggestions regarding your personal life, and then covertly subpimp your personal data while indifferently and deeply mining your grazing habits -- I think this lawsuit is, compared to others, reasonable, if a lawsuit without grievous injuries or loss can even be so.

Not everyone has a degree in IT. Perhaps instead of guerrilla advertisement, Yahoo (and other similar services) could cough up at least a token effort for their cattle, I mean customers. Maybe they could reserve some extra ad-space to discourage unknowing subjects from having shared passwords. Maybe they could do a lot more in general, and a lot less too, in a good way.

I sympathize with neither side in this case, but can empathize with only one. Altruism, despite modern Goliaths, doesn't always need an ulterior motive. Yahoo preys on the sea of humanity, and a few minnows nip back. Pardon me whilst I desiccate myself with tears.