Snafu email/pass posted online affected the writers more than YCN

By now, everyone has heard about the big snafu with a hacker releasing the emails and passwords of 450,000 freelance writers over at the Yahoo Contributor network. I was one of those writers whose email and password was publicly posted online for millions to see. Most of those affected including myself, were notified by friends who shared the news reports by various websites. It was not until 2 days later that YCN sent their emails to those affected writers. By the time YCN notified us, writers had changed passwords on various websites multiple times. Every time we fixed one, an attempt would be made on another of our accounts. I changed my face book and twitter accounts so many times it was unreal. It is a giant cluster smuck because some hack wanted to teach YCN a lesson. Who is really suffering here? Sure YCN is suffering because some writers trust the site even less now. They lost money because they had to fix the mess they made when an employee posted unencrypted emails and passwords on line. To me paying an employee their hourly wage to fix their chit is not suffering. The people who really suffered here were the writers. Many of us whose emails and passwords were posted rarely write on YCN anymore because the pay is very low. Instead we sought out private clients, other lucrative websites, and other forms of income making opportunities. I spent the better part of 12 hours changing account passwords on over one hundred web sites that I use on a monthly basis for some aspect of work. Granted not all are money making sites, there are research sites and other typed of depositories and forums. As I mentioned earlier some of those sites required the password be reset multiple times as different hackers got them locked down. This slowed my work right down. It caused me to spent time I should have been writing for income  on changing passwords. I would have much rather spent the time writing to put food on the table and keep a roof over our heads. Some may wonder why I used the same email and password combo on so many websites. The answer is simple, it is ease of use. Can you imagine having to keep track of several hundred passwords? You can bet all my accounts have different passwords now, I keep them all on a spreadsheet on the other computer. A hacker may snatch control of my Twitter but since my Facebook or Email passwords are different he will not grab control of the others without a lot of hard work.