http://metro.co.uk/2016/05/04/millions-of-gmail-hotmail-and-yahoo-email-account-details-stolen-in-huge-cyber-attack-says-security-expert-5858864/

Check and change your stuff as usual and stay safe out there on the web everyone.

This happens every year. So it proves people don't want to learn basic security things.

Yep, still doesn't make it any less annoying to have to change my passwords, ugh....

Yeah, it's not safe to use a password for a long time, even if that password is strong+.

Er, correct me if I'm wrong, but this doesn't sound like a case of individual accounts being compromised. In order to obtain account details for several millions of accounts, they must have compromised the servers of MS, Google, Yahoo etc. somehow. Unless by "people" you mean the folks working at Google, Microsoft etc., but they probably know a thing or two about security already. ( At least one would hope so. )

Do you think the targeted accounts used strong passwords? I have a gmail account since 2004 (invitation-only days), but never hacked or affected by such incidents.

So you're saying they just brute-force hacked their way into millions of accounts, not just on Google, but also MS and other major services/sites, without the owners of those services stopping them in the process? Just doesn't seem practical. At best you could do that for an individual account, but not when you're trying to gain access to such massive amounts of user accounts.

Nope, if there's any truth to this whole story, they must have actually accessed Google's/MS's data servers directly. How would you even know that your account was never part of such data leaks? When millions of accounts are stolen, obviously not all of them will actually be used for any shady purposes. I suspect most addresses are simply sold to advertising companies.

Yes it is.
I think we should change password some time. And we should make a long password. Hacker always like to stole easy password accounts. I have not got hack till now. Good luck .

Well, I think I should agree with you. They may hack many accounts but don't touch them. As you said, it's possible they use hacked data for several purposes.

Selling them to advertising/spam companies is probably the easiest way of turning such massive amounts of data into profit. Would explain why I receive spam mails on my account, even though I never post my e-mail address in public.

I've enabled two-step authenticator for Gmail and Hotmail/Outlook. Should be nothing to fear now.

Yeah, I noticed that too, spams from strange/unknown spammers in my old gmail account. Seems it's a profitable relationship for both hackers and spammers.

I agree that it does seem likely that there was a hack, but trying to get accounts one by one is also not too far fetched. I occasionally get notifications of someone trying to get into my accounts at various places. I also imagine that people reuse passwords and that can easily be used to attempt to get into their accounts. Any account that doesn't always notify you of a wrong login can be a good target for brute force, and most places work like that.

Good thing I've been using 2FA for a while now already

But millions of accounts at once? And I'm fairly sure major services such as Google or MS do have protection against such plain brute force hacking attempts.