Some Amazon passwords may have been exposed

Amazon has sent an email to an unknown number of users warning them of a potential leak and forcing them to reset their passwords, Zack Whittaker reports for ZDNet. 

Just as it revs up for a rush of holiday shoppers, the company sent a message to some users telling them that their passwords "may have been improperly stored on your device or transmitted to Amazon in a way that could potentially expose it to a third party." 

The email continued that although Amazon had "no reason" to believe the password was exposed to a third party, it has sent them a temporary password "out of an abundance of caution."

Business Insider has reached out to Amazon about the size of the potential leak and will update when we hear back.

In the meantime, this is the perfect opportunity for ensuring that you sign up for two-factor authentication.

Two-step authentication gives websites a way to verify that you're really who you say you are when logging into an account, usually through a code texted to your phone. Services like Facebook and Gmail have offered the feature for a long time, but Amazon just activated it last week.

If you had two-factor authentication, third parties wouldn't be able to get into your account even if they had both your email address and your password.