Timehop Reveals Independence Day Data Breach

Timehop, the popular social media memory jogger, has suffered a security breach. The result is that 21 million Timehop users have potentially had some of their data breached. However, Timehop is trying to assure users it now has everything under control.

For those unfamiliar with Timehop, it’s an app which resurfaces your old social media posts, reminding you what you were doing on this day years ago. Yes, it’s Facebook Memories, but for Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Foursquare, and others.

Timehop Deals With a Network Intrusion

Timehop “experienced a network intrusion” on July 4, 2018. The company identified the issue, and interrupted the breach while it was in progress. However, in the two hours it took Timehop’s engineers to lock out the attackers, some user data was accessed.

According to Timehop, this data includes the names, email addresses, and phone numbers of up to 21 million users. However, it doesn’t include private/direct messages, financial data, or social media or photo content. In other words, it could have been worse.

UPDATE — we're back online. Please read this important security announcement: https://t.co/s82imGuZpe

— Timehop (@timehop) July 8, 2018

Crucially, none of the memories Timehop stores were accessed. However, the keys that let Timehop access your old posts were compromised. So Timehop has deactivated them all, and you’ll have to log in and re-authenticate each service you have linked to Timehop.

If you used a phone number to log in to Timehop you should also take steps to ensure your number cannot be ported. This means contacting your mobile provider and asking them to add a PIN to your account or to limit the portability of your phone number.

Follow Common Sense Security Precautions

As always with these kinds of incidents we have to accept Timehop’s version of events and assurances that the damage is limited. Unfortunately, all we can do is follow Timehop’s advice to log back in and follow the common sense security precautions.

Timehop is just one of a number of tools you can use to dig up your old social media posts. And that’s on top of Facebook Memories (formerly On This Day) and Instagram archiving your old Stories. Just remember that not all memories are good ones.

Read the full article: Timehop Reveals Independence Day Data Breach

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