Gadgetory

passwords aren't just easy for hackers to get they're also free I'm Bridget Carey this is your CNET update hundreds of millions of hacked email usernames and passwords have been leaked online and it's just being given away for free a Reuters report shed light on this incredibly large stash of stolen credentials discovered by hold security researchers a young Russian hacker was bragging in online forums about how many email passwords he collected turns out there were about 57 million from Russia's most popular email service mail.ru and with that were also 40 million Yahoo credentials 33 million from Microsoft hotmail and about 24 million from Gmail accounts there are also a number of corporate accounts from banks and manufacturing and retail companies what's so incredible here is the sheer size of the data dump and how this person was just giving it away to people who paid him compliments on hacker forums the hacker originally was selling it for less than a dollar but researchers got it for free by saying nice things about him online so what do you do now with all this well the email providers are going through it to see which of these accounts are still active to warn their users hackers do collect this information from tricking people with tactics like phishing scams so it's essential for you to protect yourself by not using the same password for your email as you do for other important services and you also need and I mean need to be using 2-step authentication that's when you log in from a new computer the system sends you a text message to make sure it's really logging in and not someone who has a stolen password in fact be good your mom this Mother's Day and make sure she's set up with to step up education on her accounts it's better than flowers but let's move on to some more rosy news shall we Twitter's periscope live video streaming app is now letting you save your broadcast to be viewed beyond 24 hours when Facebook world out it's live video broadcast tool it made it so videos don't disappear and now periscope wants to do the same to stay competitive all you have to do is use the hashtag save in your broadcast title you can still delete it later if you want the feature could be buggy because it's still in beta test but it means that periscope could be a more important news reporting tool if you could save a broadcast and that's likely on the company's mind as a way to expand because periscope just this week hired its first editor-in-chief to help users find the most interesting videos to watch the new editor formerly worked at Wired and CNN that's all for this tech news roundup you can head to cnn.com for the latest from our studios in New York I'm Bridget Carey