It was just announced last week that some of the top email services had been hacked and that millions of usernames and passwords had been stolen and leaked to the internet. Some of you may be thinking, “How can I find out if my account was hacked?”
Last week Russian hackers stole millions of user’s information, including usernames and passwords, from the following email services:
- Mail.ru (a Russian email service): 57 million accounts hacked
- Yahoo Mail: 40 million accounts hacked
- Microsoft Hotmail: 33 million accounts hacked
- Gmail: 24 million accounts hacked
If you use one of these email providers, or even if you are just curious to see if your details have been compromised in the past (due to other large profile hacks), then check out the below site:
Whenever there is a data breach from a company were the usernames and passwords of members have been leaked to the internet, haveibeenpwned.com obtains the hacked usernames (it does not store or reveal any passwords though) and compiles them all in the one place so a user can search to find out if any of their accounts have been compromised.
All you need to do us put in your email address, and it will tell you if your details have been leaked, and from what sites, so you can go and change your passwords straight away. It is also very useful for businesses too, where you can search for a particular domain name and it will display all the compromised email addresses associated with that domain. Before you can perform a domain search though, you will need to verify that you control the domain you’re searching, but this is easy process and makes it more secure too.
If any of your accounts have compromised by the latest data leak, then we recommend you change your passwords straight away.