Remember MySpace?—you know, the site where people used to go for social media before Facebook.
Since it was overtaken by Facebook in 2008, MySpace has become a vernacular for old, declining, shell-of-its-former-self social media. So, when the website acknowledged it was hacked and its accounts breached, you may have thought, “So what?”
Well, it’s a bigger deal than you may think. Here’s why:
Since 2008, Myspace had declined to an audience of just about 24 million in 2013—compared to almost 76 million unique monthly visitors in 2008.
But then the site was revamped and people started to come back. Last year the site had some 50 million visitors a month, The Wall Street Journal reported.
Over 14 million artists are on MySpace, including 47,000 “major” ones, according to MySpace.
There are over 50 million songs on MySpace. That’s more than iTunes (43 million).
Moreover, even if you don’t use MySpace, if you were part of the first social media boom (roughly 2005-2007), there’s a chance you once signed up for an account.
So what’s this hack all about?
MySpace suspects Russian hacker “Peace” for stealing MySpace account information, including email addresses, user names, and passwords.
Only accounts created before the re-launch, that is before June 11, 2013, were affected. The re-launch brought new security measures.
The site says a “portion” of the older accounts was compromised, but doesn’t specify how many.
