I just updated my online accounts thanks to Gawker’s recent news regarding their user database being compromised. I did have a gawker account, I’m a reader and subscriber to lifehacker.com.
You can check to see if you need to change passwords by looking if your account was compromised here (http://www.slate.com/id/2277768) the widget looks up your email or username.
At the time I created my lifehacker account (that is compromised) I was using my primary email address and a common password that I used everywhere. I have since created a better method for using online sites and also passwords. My method is based off the common password variation method. I use a similar password phrase to create the password.
Example: J1MB3cH3r – this uses numbers and capitols to re-create my common used phrase (no I don’t actually use that as my common password) . Then depending on the site I append some type of element to merry the username and password together.
facebook.com – J1MB3cH3r@fb (notice I added the ‘@’ sign) I use this to separate my common password with the site specific attribute ‘fb’.
So make sure that you change your password info and keep strong passwords.