Daily Tech Snippet: Wednesday, June 1

• Why you should delete the online accounts you don’t use anymore — right now: Despite falling out of vogue years ago, MySpace — that old precursor to Facebook — still has details on more user accounts than the United States has people. And now a hefty chunk of those account credentials has been leaked to the entire Internet, in a humbling reminder that the Matchbox Twenty-inspired username you probably made in high school is still worth a heck of a lot to companies and criminals. As many as 360 million MySpace accounts turned up for sale Friday in a 33-gigabyte dump online, according to reports that were confirmed Monday by MySpace's parent, Time Inc. The massive leak includes passwords, email addresses and usernames that were swiped from MySpace in a hack dating back to June 2013, before MySpace made a site redesign that closed some security gaps. It's unclear how many of the accounts in the MySpace hack were still "active," in the sense that they belong to people who continue to log into the service today. But chances are at least some of these accounts hadn't been touched for years. The reason this makes you vulnerable is the same reason experts say you shouldn't use the same username and password for every online service — it makes it easy to take one set of stolen credentials and plug them into others, giving hackers potential access to large swaths of your digital life. Personal data from the MySpace breach was going for sale to the tune of thousands of dollars, highlighting how even outdated information can still carry significant value. But whether your old data gets used for marketing, fraud or some other nefarious purpose is still at least partly within your control.

• Inside Uber’s Auto-Lease Machine, Where Almost Anyone Can Get a Car: In its relentless pursuit for growth, Uber needs new drivers, and many of those drivers need cars. To help them get started, Uber has been offering short-term leases since July through a wholly owned Delaware-based subsidiary called Xchange Leasing, LLC. It partners with auto dealerships, advertises to drivers, manages risk, and even pays repo men to chase down cars whose drivers aren't making their payments. Xchange may be key to Uber's continued expansion as it tangles with Lyft in the U.S. and a bevy of competitors abroad. Uber announced a partnership with Toyota last week to finance even more cars. This year, Uber said its financing and discount programs, which include Xchange, will put more than 100,000 drivers on the road. That requires dipping into the vast pool of people with bad or no credit. In a deal led by Goldman Sachs, Xchange received a $1 billion credit facility to fund new car leases, according to a person familiar with the matter. The deal will help Uber grow its U.S. subprime auto leasing business and it will give many of the world's biggest financial institutions exposure to the company's auto leases.  The credit facility is basically a line of credit that Xchange can use to lease out cars to Uber drivers.

• Instagram Adds Business Profiles in Advertising Growth Push: Facebook’s photo-sharing application Instagram is unveiling tools to help businesses differentiate themselves from regular users in a bid to help drive advertising revenue. Instagram, which has been heralded by analysts as a key source of growth for Facebook, will now let businesses create special profiles that will allow customers to contact them directly rather than posting public comments. Instagram will also offer business users new data on which posts are getting the most engagement and give them the ability to turn posts into advertisements. Facebook is working to leverage Instagram’s 400 million monthly users to keep up its pace of revenue growth. Instagram ads are expected to bring in $1.53 billion in revenue in 2016, or 15 percent of Facebook’s total ad sales, according to eMarketer. Instagram has 8.5 million users in Canada, Levine said.

• Microsoft sells patents to Xiaomi, builds 'long-term partnership': Software maker Microsoft  is selling about 1,500 of its patents to Chinese device maker Xiaomi [XTC.UL], a rare departure for the U.S. company and part of what the two companies say is the start of a long-term partnership. The deal, announced on Wednesday, also includes a patent cross-licensing arrangement and a commitment by Xiaomi to install copies of Microsoft software, including Office and Skype, on its phones and tablets. Both companies declined to discuss financial terms of the deal.  Jonathan Tinter, corporate vice president at Microsoft, said the company was keen to tap into Xiaomi's young, affluent and educated users by having its products pre-installed on their devices. He declined to go into detail about the patent deals, but said the overall deal was something "we do only with a few strategic partners." Microsoft has cut licensing deals with many Android device makers over the years, but has had less luck with Chinese manufacturers. Florian Mueller, a patents expert who consulted for Microsoft in the past, said it was rare for Microsoft to actually sell its patents, adding "it's possible Microsoft found it easier to impose its Android patent tax on Xiaomi as part of a broader deal that also involved a transfer of patents."