Houzz Hacked!!!

More Problems for Houzz!!!

On January 31, 2019, Houzz finally revealed to their members through email the Houzz site was hacked…

Houzz made cyber news on Jan. 31, 2018 releasing an email to members and publically admitting they had suffered a data breach. Why it took over a month from when they say they found out is profound! In another twist of events, on June 3, 2018 Little Redstone notified Houzz about what looked like suspicious activity from a new website called Befez that seemed to use only Houzz data on Befez.com.

Houzz made headlines in the cyber world of security on January 31, 2019 with the admittance of a security breach with news that their site had been hacked! Houzz themselves reported this and sent an email to “those members they suspected may have been compromised.” As well, many other sites reported this hack . They say they became aware of the issue in Dec of 2018 and January 31, 2019 finally decided to email members and report it to public…

“Becuase we value the TRUST” (LOL) the Houzz email stated, interesting word choice considering the more Houzz gets exposed the more the word trust seems to not be a true representation of their company. Maybe trust would be more believable had they reported when they found out, NOT OVER A MONTH later!!! On Feb 4, 2019 Houzz they posted FAQ page in relation to the hack. It is interesting the wording they use and what people on the web say about the possibility of identity theft caused by this data hack…

MORE Houzz???

If we are to believe all of what Houzz is reporting and saying then it would seem appropriaate that stories would line up…

Q: Were all Houzz users affected? A: No… This is from the Houzz FAQ page… There is a reported 57 Million users data available on the Dark Web… Houzz say they have 40 Million users… Maybe the math is off, maybe the hacker is lying , maybe they don’t include they own personal as users? Either way the numbers don’t seem to add up….

Why did Houzz wait so long to Tell Users…

Who knows but our belief is that is was to avoid what may have been a huge loss of sales over the Christmas period. Would you buy from or trust a site you knew was hacked??? Probably not and the same answer we are sure would be echoed throughout the web.

What Data Houzz Said was Stolen?

What information did they take? According to Houzz it was:

Certain publicly visible information from a user’s Houzz profile only if the user made this information publicly available (e.g., first name, last name, city, state, country, profile description)
Certain internal identifiers and fields that have no discernible meaning to anyone outside of Houzz (e.g. country of site used, whether a user has a profile image)
Certain internal account information (e.g., email address, user ID, prior Houzz usernames, one-way encrypted passwords salted uniquely per user, IP address, and city and ZIP code inferred from IP address) and certain publicly available account information (e.g., current Houzz username and, if a user logs into Houzz through Facebook, the user’s public Facebook ID)

Is this just a simple change your password fix as they say, well that depends if you trust them or not but from their track record the answer is… uhmm… probably not!

Houzz Data Hits The Dark Web

Houzz makes the cyber security news again!

The Hacker made public that the amount of stolen user profiles from the Houzz breach was a whopping 57 million. That sounds like pretty much every account new and old as it is said Houzz have around 40 million users… Sounds like they should have notified EVERY account holder new and old!

“Out of an abundance of caution, we have notified all Houzz users who may have been affected.” uhmm.. ok…

WAIT!!! There is MORE!!!

With the news of the release of the data being available comes the date of when the data was said to have been obtained… The hacker claiming responsibility for the data breach reported it was done in July of 2018… So Houzz took SIX months to even notice… and worse yet, OVER A MONTH to tell the public and the members of Houzz, trust issues much???

But it gets crazier, the hacker put all the stolen information on the Dark Web FOR SALE!!! No email from Houzz about that… Let us hope that Houzz are not lying about what information the hacker got…

AND MORE!!!

Here is another hole in their so called great security that seems to be getting little or no public traction and why you may want to consider cancelling your membership as a consumer or as a professional along with many more reasons we will show such as no follows, improper profile use, and more…

On June 3 of 2018 Little Redstone found what looked like some kind of hack or something strange with one of our images posted on Houzz. We reported this to Houzz and had asked Houzz several times if their site had been hacked as we had noticed a new site with ALL Houzz related information on it called Befez. We received no response to our inquiries until Aug 1, 2018 when we finally got this reply “Houzz is not Hacked, broken and due to your views, we are deactivating your account” NICE! Way to go Houzz!!! Ironically the hacker reported they breached Houzz in July… maybe just a coincidence but what are the chances?

Does Houzz owe Little Redstone an apology!?!?

***Please note, the Befez site IS STILL LIVE and may lead to a porn site, we suggest do not click on any Befez / Houzz related images or links…