In the past few years, there have been several serious data breaches revealing millions of passwords to hackers.

This information can easily be used to get into your accounts. Unfortunately, it will be too late when your account has been hacked and all your information stolen.

The best way to stop this is to take preventative measures in order to see if your accounts made with your email or password have already been compromised. If they are we can change them before the inevitable happens and your personal information is stolen.

Meet https://haveibeenpwned.com/. This website is amazing. You will be able to check if your accounts you have signed up with your email and or passwords have been hacked.

First head over to https://haveibeenpwned.com/

Type your email in and see the results. It’s more likely than not that you’re at least one of your accounts using your email has been released. This means that your accounts in the future are susceptible to being hacked.
Alright, now we can see the websites/services you have signed up for and the actions you need to take on those accounts.

For example, if it says a website like ‘google.com’ has had a data breach you should head over to that website and change the password. Also if you use one password for all of your accounts you will need to change them just to be sure that you are safe.

Another cool feature is to see which companies have had major or minor security breaches.

This information from these companies could have sensitive personal information from you, so it would be a good idea to see if you have signed up for an account with any of the listed companies with known data breaches. 

You can also search your passwords to see which one has been compromised.

To keep safe you should always have a strong password that has one uppercase, one lower case, one character e.g. (!, ?) and one number; turn on two-step authentication when applicable and never use the same password twice. Doing all of this will ensure that your personal information is less likely to be hacked.

Now if you can’t remember more than one password then I would recommend using a password manager like LastPass or my personal favourite Dashlane. These applications automatically sync, renew and autofill passwords making your online identity and sensitive personal information more secure.

Now not to fear if you follow my steps you should be a lot safer online. Your sensitive personal information should now be nice and secure. 🙂

-YS