here's the eye-opening thing about this hack. your information hasn't necessarily been safe. heartbleed lets potential hackers utilize a tool to test if another computer is online. with this hack, the heartbeat check could force a computer to diverge secret information, including the keys to the encryption code. once hackers have the keys to this, it's potentially game over. your user names, passwords, all that data you thought was safe is up for grabs. the heartbleed bug leaves no traces, so you have no idea if or when you've been hacked. of course, these sites are scrambling to get rid of the bug, but it may be days or weeks before the entire web is fixed. what can you do about it? right now you might have to sit tight. a lot of these websites are still trying to update their code. once they have, definitely go in and change your passwords. as always, be very cautious about the information you put out there.