Trend Micro urges eBay users to change passwords

If you’re making a list of high profile data breaches, you now have a new name to add to that list; eBay. In a posting in the “in the news” section of their web site eBay clarified to some extent the scale of the breach, although even the headline seems incapable of telling it like it is.
Hackers gained unauthorized access to a database that included eBay customers' names, home addresses, dates of birth and encrypted passwords. eBay said that financial information like credit card numbers were stored separately and were not compromised. Encouragingly, the company said it has seen no fraudulent activity as a result of the hack.
 The database, which was compromised between late February and early March, included eBay customers’ name, encrypted password, email address, physical address, phone number and date of birth.

"If you’re an eBay customer, what this means first and foremost is that you should change your password right away. With the ongoing spate of data breaches like this, it’s all the more important to try and use unique passwords for each site. This is where a password manager tool like Trend Micro’s DirectPass can help. Beyond changing your password, this incident shows again why you may want to look into real time identity theft monitoring as well. Unlike other data breaches we’ve seen, this one includes physical address, telephone number and date of birth, all of which can make it easier for criminals to steal your identity. Just changing your password won’t protect you against this threat," Dhanya Thakkar, Managing Director, India & SEA, Trend Micro.
Although investigations are of course still ongoing, the current posting indicates that eBay are relatively sure that unauthorized access was only to one database, or certainly the wording of the article presents that view. For now, if you’re an eBay user, you need to change your password there and if you used that password on any other web site, you’re going to need to change it there too. Unfortunately changing your name or address is not so easy, that’ll have to stay compromised.