How to check if your info is among the 560 million passwords that has been leaked

Never a dull moment and now something else to worry about.

While the WannaCry worm is continuing to hit systems around the world, another database has appeared which contains 560 million leaked emails and passwords.

Bob Diachenko revealed this on the MacKeeper Security Research Center that “combo lists” have begun to appear. Bob and Troy Hunt analyzed various data and discovered that “During our research , e were surprised to see as many as 313 large databases, with size over 1GB, with several terabytes of data, hosted in US, Canada and Australia.”

It seems that these combo lists are made up of data leaked from various previous leaks such as “LinkedIn, Dropbox, Lastfm, MySpace, Adobe, Neopets. RiverCityMedia, 000webhost, Tumblr,  Badoo, Lifeboat etc.”

Denial is not a river in Egypt

The problem is denial. People simply think that they could’nt possibly be one of the people that have been compromised. Most people think “who would want to read my emails anyways? and if they do – let them.” This is only part of the problem. Seen as most people use the same password across all their various websites, it means that its not just about reading your email. Its about being able to access other websites that you used the same password on. Remember that hitting the “forgot my password” button on a website ususaly sends an email to reset the password….an email that the hacker has access to!

Have you been hacked? 

I tested some email addresses, and thanks to the eThekwini Municipality in South Africa who suffered a security breach in 2016, many South Africans information has been compromised. This info includes: Dates of birth, Deceased date, Email addresses, Genders, Government issued IDs, Names, Passport numbers, Passwords, Phone numbers, Physical addresses, Utility bills.

How to check if you have been hacked, pwned or compromised ?

head over to this website and enter your email address, and see for yourself: https://haveibeenpwned.com/

Then…maybe and just maybe you would realize that it’s a good idea to… GO AND CHANGE YOUR PASSWORD !