Poop.
I don't even use Gawker (I think I joined up for some crummy affiliate site) and I didn't even have one post. So it kinda really totally majorly sucks this happened.
Luckily I don't really re-use passwords much so it's not a big deal. So my weakest link is simply the site it affected. But I did have a kind of 'lame' password I used on sites like Gawker, though. So, I went around and changed my passwords everywhere. To make sure I didn't miss any accounts I decided to search for myself using Google and Pipl people search.
Well. Let's just say I stumbled across a fact I didn't know about myself:
So apparently I'm a dude now.
I'm sure my boyfriend has something to say about that 'quick fact'!
Look, I totally get that other people use the name 'dunneh' and that maybe I wasn't the first person on the entire internet to use it. I also get that it's kinda gender neutral, and I'm sure a guy from Ohio has it somewhere. But obviously, he's not the only one using it. And I find it kinda funny-- not only does Pipl get to deem who is a man and who isn't when you search for a username, (based on the data of the first hit I guess?) they also tout it as a fact (a quick one, no less!) at the top of the search results, so it's the first thing people see... despite the fact it is completely and utterly wrong. I can just see budding online relationships being nerfed by Pipl; "B..but... I looked you up and pipl says you're a dude!!" Haha.
But I digress, back to the Gizmodo/Kotaku/Gawker blowout. People are saying that the thing to take away from this is that 'people have awful passwords and people need to up their password safety,' and things like that. But that's not it. The real moral is that you shouldn't resue your password for anything. And the second is that your personal details are only as safe as the company that's using them, and that who you entrust your details to is very important. My password was lame and easy to guess, yeah. But it wasn't guessed, at the end of the day. Theirs was. And that's what really pisses me off. Thank god I didn't use that password that often.
Lastly, Gawkers response to this has been mediocre at best; I found out via amazon-- who parsed the list and emailed the users affected. I then saw the email from gawker, which I read; and I found it extremely unapologetic considering the wide spread ramifications of such a thing. Not to mention the mere fact my details were published was because Gawker played a game of Chicken with the hackers, Gnosis.
Gawker lost.
Not only that, people have been saying twitter had the warning it up for two days prior. What. The. Eff. I was a reluctant Gawker user before; I'm a non user for life now. So :P to the internet today, on the whole. A big :P
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