An Invaluable Resource Against Data Breaches in the Hacking Age
You’re probably just as concerned about the rise of online fraud, data breaches, hacks and stollen accounts as the rest of the world is lately. There is a site to help you verify if you have been compromised: HaveIBeenPwned.com (HIBP).
HIBP boasts a database of 581,434,781 stolen user accounts for you to check your email accounts against. The impressive amount of hacked data includes information sourced from 91 different websites that were compromised by hackers, including Adobe (152,445,165 accounts), Snapchat (4,609,615 accounts), MySpace (360,000,000 accounts) and most recently, the 65M Tumblr account records which just went up for sale on the underground market.
Checking Your Email Against A Data Breach
If you’re concerned about a data breach and want to check, simply enter your email onto HIPB, and then the site will then search through its hundreds of millions of records, and return results of any breaches you’ve been swept up in. Although many of the original data breaches include sensitive information like credit card information and passwords, HIBP only saves the user names and email addresses, so that people can find out whether they’ve been affected in a data breach.
With data breaches being so incredibly common today, if someone is victimized, they are at risk of hackers logging into accounts, the theft of financial information, and more. Additionally, many companies don’t notify their customers of a breach until long after it’s happened, leaving them even more vulnerable to attacks. If a victim is aware of the breach as soon as it happens, they can at least reset their credentials or be more vigilant to protect themselves.
You can find out more information, or if you’ve been compromised, by visiting the HIBP’s site at https://haveibeenpwned.com
