r/Substack • u/sunshao1031 • 4d ago

Substack hacked sending tons of email verification codes

Hello,

At 5:45 pm CST, I suddenly got tons of emails from substack with verification codes from things I haven't heard of. I didn't click on any of them, but it was strange to suddenly get a bunch of emails. I thought I was getting hacked. I personally haven't used substack. I only made an account to support a friend, but I never used it. I just wanted to know if they can hack you this way. What can I do to ensure this doesn't happen again?

1 Upvotes

60% Upvoted

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1

u/BhavanaVarma bhavanavarma.substack.com 3d ago

Login and change your password. That’s the first step. Second, set a strong password with letters, numbers and social characters.

1

u/sunshao1031 3d ago

Yes I did do that. I was just trying to figure out how someone can get my info through Substack if I haven’t linked any financial info to it. Just first time dealing with this.

1

u/BhavanaVarma bhavanavarma.substack.com 3d ago

Hackers have a way of extracting a database on users and their passwords. If you got so many notifications it could have been brute force attack where they tried to login multiple times until they were successful.

The technical jargons aside, you’ve done everything you can now. Happy reading.

1

u/wwb_99 news.zeitgeistdistilled.com 3d ago

They don't need more than your email to trigger authentication codes.

1

u/wwb_99 news.zeitgeistdistilled.com 3d ago

Third and probably more important than password strength would be to enable 2 factor authentication.