How to tell if your email address, username or password has been compromised.
And then I’m going to show you what to do about it.
Wikipedia:
The term, “Pwned” implies domination or humiliation of a rival, used primarily in the Internet-based video game culture to taunt an opponent who has just been soundly defeated (e.g., “You just got pwned!”).
We’re not playing video games here. What I’m referring to is this.
Has some hack that happened somewhere, grabbed your email address, username and/or password and posted that information on the internet (the darknet or other) for all to see and use as they like? If so, you’ve been Pwned. Does that make sense?
You’ve heard about the data breaches that some big companies have had.
- Yahoo disclosed that 1 BILLION user accounts were ‘compromised’ in December
- Before that, Tumblr was hacked of 65 MILLION usernames and passwords (they are now a Yahoo company)
- Linkedin was hacked of 117 MILLION passwords
- Drag and drop website creator, Weebly had 43 MILLION compromised accounts
- Not to mention Adobe, DropBox and so on and on…
Sometimes the hackers just hack for the challenge. When they do a big hack they have to somehow prove it, you know… to get the street cred, right? That’s when they post what they got anonymously online. Next, the “Bad Guys” can grab that data and do whatever they want with it.
Sometimes the hackers hack for money. When they accomplish a big data breach they then sell the data to the highest bidder. These guys are the real “BAD Bad Guys”. They are looking for quality stuff and looking to do really bad things with it.
THE PROBLEM
The problem you have is that while you might have had an account on one of those sites, how do you know they got your information? How do begin searching and honestly – do you even have time?
THE ANSWER
You are going to love this!
There’s a simple website that does just that for you.
Just enter your email address and if it happened to grabbed in a breach somewhere and posted online it’ll show you. It’s called https://haveibeenpwned.com
If it does show pwnage it’ll tell you what breach it was from and what they got.
Now go to that website and change your password.
As a matter of fact you should go to all the websites you use and change your password. Do it on a regular basis, use strong passwords, and never use the same password for multiple accounts.
FACT: 1.9 million users of Adobe were using the password “123456” and 345,834 users were using the password “password“. I like the 33,452 that were using the password “letmein” the best! The bad guys will never figure that out! Check it out HERE and then start being smarter about your online activity. Please.
BONUS: I talked about this on the tool of the week on our podcast.
Mike Mueller
He's an avid hockey fan, rides a mountain bike, sometimes rides a road bike, has a few motorcycles (he had a really fast one, bought a cool orange one, rode a really slow one, and wants a really small one). If that isn't enough, he makes cheese and sourdough bread, loves strong beer and good red wine, and poorly plays the Mandolin.
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