The Greatest Password Leak: How to Protect Yourself, How to Check Your Data in the Database
The leakage of two billion usernames/passwords has affected every third person in the world.
On the MEGA file hosting service on January 17, 2019, an archive containing the logins and passwords of almost 773 million users was found in the public domain. The database weighing 87 gigabytes was named "Collection # 1" and was given the status of the largest user data leak of all time. But two weeks later, the story took a new turn.
What happened?
On January 29, information appeared on the Internet about more large-scale leaks, which were named "Collection No. 2-5". Imagine these numbers. 845 Gigabytes! 25 billion usernames and passwords! 2.2 billion login-password pairs! According to Forbes, all five collections have data on every third person.
There are about 130 copies of these collections on the Internet, and their number continues to grow. It follows from this that this information cannot be removed from public access.
Is there a cause for concern?
There is. The information of 2.2 billion pairs, of course, does not mean that a third of the planet is under threat, but most likely, the data of your accounts from popular services is in the "collections".
What data is in the "collections"?
Difficult question. Most likely this is a huge archive accumulated from various leaks, and the information in it may be outdated. But it's impossible to say for sure.
How Can I Check My Data?
There are several sites where you can check email addresses and passwords.
1. haveibeenpwned.com - here you can check if your email address is in the "collections".
2. haveibeenpwned.com/Passwords - here you can also check the availability of your passwords in the databases.
For added security, try to verify your data in such a way that the login and password cannot be linked to each other, for example, from different devices, through different Internet connections, etc. But even this will not give a 100% security guarantee, since these sites contain only information from the first collection.
There is also a site that contains data from all five collections sec.hpi.de/ilc/search. There you need to enter your mailing address for verification, to which you will receive a response.
How to Protect Yourself?
Change passwords in all popular services. Since experienced crackers can hijack your mail through a forgotten, but contained in the collections account on myspace. And even if your data was not in any of the collections or on any of the verification sites, remember that they may contain outdated data, and no one knows where your passwords might have leaked after that.
It is necessary to use complex passwords, and this is not "Romashka", the complex one consists of 15-20 characters and contains not only letters and numbers, but also symbols.
Of course, this is difficult, of course, it is annoying, but you hardly remember when and where you registered and what personal data you entered. And if you use one password for everything, then it will not be difficult to find out your bank card details and even a three-digit security code for online purchases on the backside.
As additional protection, you can use password managers, of which there are many in the AppStore and Google Play, as well as in-browser extension stores.
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