
If you need time to remember it, write it down and keep it somewhere safe. To check if you have a strong password, you can use this tool from LastPasscom. When you choose your new password, make sure to use a combination of uppercase and lowercase letters, symbols, numbers, and is at least 8 characters long to make sure they’re not easy to guess or crack by brute force. If your email address or password were identified as pwned, then it’s time to take action right away, and the first step is to change your passwords. My email address has been pwned, what should I do? The site allows you to separately check if your email address or password has appeared in data breaches. It is a website that allows internet users to check if their personal data has been compromised by data breaches. One way of checking if your accounts are compromised is by using by security researcher Troy Hunt. How to know if my accounts are compromised? If you’re using a single email address and password for all these accounts and happened to get exposed, then the attacker can simply change your password (assuming you don’t have 2FA activated), lock you out, access all your data, and use it for other malicious activities. You might be thinking, “I’m just using my email address to keep in touch with people and send files.” But remember that you’re also probably using it for other services like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Netflix, Spotify, Lazada, Shopee, Dropbox, Amazon, Steam, even bank accounts.

The information is now being circulated online and sold to cybercriminals. One big example is the recent data breach that exposes over 772 million email addresses and over 21 million passwords.


So if your accounts have been compromised, or “pwned”, what are the necessary steps that you should take? We hope this article can help you with that.Ī data breach, by definition, “is a security incident in which sensitive, protected or confidential data is copied, transmitted, viewed, stolen or used by an individual unauthorized to do so.” Data like your email addresses and passwords should not be exposed or released to the public or to any entity that can’t be trusted.

Like the recently reported breach, compromised email addresses and passwords that are possibly used for work, social media accounts, and financial services, are left open to be used by cybercriminals. Data breaches are rampant nowadays and have also put ordinary users like you and me at risk.
