Cyber criminals these days are targeting databases of famous websites to obtain sensitive information of millions of users at once. Successful data breach results in exposure of millions of user accounts with each account containing an internal ID, username, email, encrypted password and a password hint in plain text.
Sometimes other valuable personally identifiable information like the IP addresses used by the registered identities; associated credit card entries; PAN card numbers and others of the like may also get revealed during these breaches.
Major data breaches of all time include:
- 772,904,991 Collection #1 accounts
- 763,117,241 Verifications.io accounts
- 711,477,622 Onliner Spambot accounts
- 622,161,052 Data Enrichment Exposure From PDL Customer accounts
- 593,427,119 Exploit.In accounts
- 457,962,538 Anti Public Combo List accounts
- 393,430,309 River City Media Spam List accounts
- 359,420,698 MySpace accounts
- 268,765,495 Wattpad accounts
- 234,842,089 NetEase accounts
(Source: haveibeenpwned)
The leaked database information is usually sold in online black markets for big MONEY!!!
Usually the application develops come up with a tool/software immediately after the breach to let you verify if you particular email id or user account is compromised or not. However without waiting for any such tool to arrive we can opt for an all-time savior that maintains an up to date database of all such website database breaches.
Have I Been Pwned is a free online service that collects e-mail addresses from data breaches. Thus, anyone can use this service to find out whether he or she is compromised or not. Just visit the website and enter your Email ID in the search field and wait for a few seconds.
If your email id was exposed (change password immediately) in any of the data breaches then the result view will display a red window indicating that “Oh-no, pawned!”
Whats great about this platform is that it actually has the database of all data breaches. Hence it also gives details of the breaches where your email was exposed.
However if your email id stayed safe from all the data breaches, then the result view will display a green window indicating that “Good News- No pwnage found!”
Check your Email ID once to discover the results!!!
