Data breaches are at all-time highs lately. With one being larger than the other. This week was no different as a massive data breach occurred called Collection #1 that exposed around 773 million emails and another 21 million plus unique passwords. Collection#1 data breach is a true monster and something we should be worried about if future trends continue.
This breach was reported by HaveIBeenPwnded and the owner Troy Hunt. This website indexes hacked information. The alarming thing Hunt said was that there was also 21,222,975 unique passwords that have allso been breached and uploaded in a plain text file that anyone can view.
A lot of chatter about this breach is whether or not the email addresses and the passwords are associated. At first look this could be the case, but as Troy Hunt has referred to the list storing 2.7 billion combinations of passwords and usernames.
According to Brian Krebs who reported that the Collection #1 data breach trove is actually just a single offering from an annoumous seller who has cclaimed to have at leas six more batches of data. It was also reprotd that the Collecitno #1 data is anywere from 2-3 years old.
What should your next move be if your part of the Collection #1 data breach?
Check your email addresses and passcodes. Head over to HaveIBeenPwnded.com and check if your email has been compromised in the Collection #1 data breach or any other breach for that matter. This website will also allow you to check your password within the Collection #1 breach as well.
Two things will happen at this point. One, your email and password have been compromised. if this is the case manually start to change the passcodes as soon as possible. if they haven’t, take a deep breath and consider yourself lucky.
Follow these simple rules with passwords
Do not reuse passwords and always enable a two-factor authentication process when possible. Most people will use the same password over and over again for different logins. while this may seem like a good idea to remember one password its actually dangerous practice. What should you do? invest in a good password manager and store unique passwords for all your logins.
We recommend and have been using Roboform for years with no issues. https://www.roboform.com/Roboform uses one master passcode and stores all of your logins and passcodes to all websites in its vault. Now you can change up or use difficult passcodes for each login and RoboForm will securely store the passcodes and logins for you.
