A very minor update on the flood of emails that have been going out under the Auto Assembly name. Many of you who are tech-savvy may have heard about a security flaw known as Heartbleed that has been discovered in the encryption systems used by many websites. Users across the globe are being actively encouraged to change their passwords on all affected systems to prevent their personal details from being stolen and used for unauthorised purposes.
Understandably, we have been concerned about this and whether this would have contributed to the problem we have encountered but on further investigation we have found that not only is our email provider one of those that had ensured that it’s system was safe from this security vulnerability (the flaw is based on a loophole the site’s SSL code) as is our payment handling site PayPal, some are not so fortunate. While Facebook and Tumblr are both in the process of having this bug fixed it is advisable to update your passwords immediately, as is the same for your Twitter accounts. Google and Yahoo (and their associated email services) are also likely to be affected so we recommend that you updated these as a matter of urgency as well. Finally, for those of you who use DropBox, we would also suggest that you update your accounts.
Simon Plumbe
Committee Head, Auto Assembly
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