Huge data leaks affect millions of accounts: check to see if you’re one of the victims

Millions of e-mail addresses and passwords have been available online since mid-December 2018. That’s what cybersecurity researcher, Troy Hunt, discovered recently. This breach of data protection has the name Collection #1 and, according to Hunt, is the biggest data security breach ever.

Is my account one of them?

If you’d like to know if your data has been affected, visit the Have I Been Pwned website and enter your e-mail address(es). If any of your accounts appears in red and says “Collection #1”, then it is involved in the latest data leak. So, change your password(s) immediately for each account concerned! And do the same for any other account that had turned red as the result of a leak discovered previously.

Use different passwords

Our main piece of advice is still the same: use a different password for each account! That way, if a hacker manages to get hold of a password, he or she will not be able to access your other accounts. And think about using a password manager (for example the free version of LastPass) to help you.