BLAST FROM THE PAST

Why the Myspace Hack Matters

A Myspace hack compromised 360 million accounts. Here’s why you should care.

These days, chances are you don’t have a Myspace account. But if you ever did, you should be concerned.

On Tuesday Time Inc., which now owns Myspace, announced that the oft-forgotten, early '00s social media phenom had fallen victim to a massive hack that compromised 360 million accounts.

If you deactivated your Myspace account a long time ago, that may not sound like it concerns you—but it could. As long as you’ve ever had a Myspace account, your data is still on Myspace’s servers, which means it's vulnerable to hacks of those servers.

Time says it’s working hard to fight back.

“We take the security and privacy of customer data and information extremely seriously,” Time’s Chief Financial Officer, Jeff Bairstow, said in a statement. “Our information security and privacy teams are doing everything we can to support the Myspace team.”

However, if you started your account after June 11, 2013, you’re in luck. That was when Myspace relaunched with tighter security controls, and the hack only affected data from before that date—specifically usernames, passwords, and email addresses.

The real mystery is why on Earth you were still using Myspace in 2013...

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Nathan Place

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