Considering that a lot of websites these days require us to submit personal information when signing up for a service, like our names, email address, date of birth, and sometimes more, this is a treasure trove for hackers who will then be able to resell that information on the dark web, or use it for other nefarious purposes.This also means that no website is truly safe from such hacks, and unfortunately it looks like Quora is the latest victim. If you’ve ever put in a question on Google before, chances are you might have stumbled across Quora which allows users to submit questions and have them answered by the community, similar to Yahoo Answers.
However the seemingly innocuous website has been hacked and the company has announced a data breach which could have compromised about 100 million users. “On Friday we discovered that some user data was compromised by a third party who gained unauthorized access to one of our systems. We’re still investigating the precise causes and in addition to the work being conducted by our internal security teams, we have retained a leading digital forensics and security firm to assist us. We have also notified law enforcement officials.”
So far information that could have been compromised includes the user’s name, email, hashed password, public content such as questions and anwers posted, along with non-public information like answer requests, downvotes, and direct messages. Quora will be notifying affected users by email, so if you have received an email, you should check it out and follow its instructions.