On the Reddit blog today the social web sharing site announced that their reddit@gmail.com account had been hacked, adding that the account is used only for feedback e-mail, thus no confidential data was compromised. Reddit is now using reddit@reddit.com as their official e-mail for the time being.
Reddit released the following statement via their blog:
“We’re in contact with both google’s and twitter’s security team, and the site has not been broken into. All he’s done at this point is ruined everyone’s night. We don’t recycle passwords, and we don’t store passwords in the reddit email. No one’s account has been compromised. We don’t store any confidential information in that account; it is just for feedback email.”
The part about the team contacting Twitter was added because their official Twitter account was also compromised leading to fake Tweets being added to their account. The fake Tweets have now been removed.
Not surprisingly the Reddit story reached the top of Reddit.
One user asked via Reddit’s own commenting system why Reddit was using Gmail in the first place to which they received this answer:
“When we were much, much smaller (no mail server, etc) it was the easiest way for several people to get to the feedback account at the same time, and it stuck.”
Tip to growing sites: don’t trust other companies to protect your private data. Hmmm..I wonder if their password was Digg or StumbleUpon…all kidding aside, come on Reddit, I love your service, but your own goofs shouldn’t be landing at the top of your own site. [via Mashable]
