It’s time to change your passwords! 1,160,253,228 unique combinations of addresses along with passwords have been found circulating on hacking forums. That is BILLION with a B! This is the biggest data breach to date. This data is very likely actively being used to hijack accounts around the internet.
To break it down some there are 772,904,991 unique e-mail addresses and 21,222,975 unique passwords in this data breach. You can see if you are in the data breach by checking your e-mail address at https://haveibeenpwned.com/.
Use Strong Passwords
A strong set of passwords is also very important! You want to make it very time-consuming for a hacker to crack your password. If it is to much work they will move on to an easier target. If you have any doubts about the strength of your passwords then you should read my post about making strong passwords that cannot be cracked so easy.
Password Managers
This news is a perfect example of why you should not use the same password for all of your accounts. Instead, use some kind of password manager. You can get something for free like
More Details About The Data Breach
If you would like more technical details about the data collection that was found then check out the blog post by Tory Hunt who discovered this collection. He goes over how he found the breach and steps we can take to protect ourselves.
