73,000 Finnish web users' details hacked

The login details of 73,000 users of a popular Finnish family-oriented discussion forum were stolen and posted online in the latest in a series of widespread hacking attacks, police said today.

"We are aware of this incident and are investigating it as part of our wider investigation into the hacking attacks," police investigator Timo Piiroinen told AFP.

In the latest incident, usernames, passwords and email addresses were made public Monday morning via another Finnish discussion forum.

Police warned netizens to ensure they had secure and separate passwords for their online services, particularly since some of the exposed login information also provided access to other sites.

"We've been encouraging people to change their passwords and to have different passwords for different services, especially the more valuable ones," Piiroinen explained.

A group calling itself Anonymous Finland has previously claimed responsibility for a number of recent hacking incidents in the Nordic country, including hacking and publishing some 500,000 email accounts as well as nearly 15,000 passwords.

The personal identification and contact details of some 16,000 Finns were also leaked online in a separate incident earlier claimed by Anonymous.

However, the group of "hacktivists" said it had nothing to do with the latest data leak, adding in a tweet that it "had nothing against such websites (and) had no reason to hack them."