Estimated reading time: 3 minutes
These days you read about companies like Facebook/Meta, Amazon or eBay getting hacked for their users’ data. Fresh news of data breaches are reported daily. All this news is disquieting, but even more so if you think your personal data has been stolen. So how does one establish if one’s data has been stolen, & is vulnerable to cyber attack? How to know about your personal info hack?
The Dark Web
The World Wide Web that you can search via Google, Bing, DuckDuckGo or any other mainstream engine is known as the Ordinary Web, The Google Web or the Clear Web. However, there is an underbelly of the Web called the Dark Web, which is an encrypted layer of the Internet, only accessible via a direct URL or the TOR browser (The Onion Router). Almost all stolen data invariably ends up on this layer. It’s often free to download, in bulk, by anyone who has the criminal’s Website address. (These addresses are the items that are often sold by these cybercriminals.)
Some Ways To Check if Your Personal Information Has Been Hacked
Fabulous resource to confirm if your data is on the Dark Web, or to find out your personal info hack. It’s also very easy to use – simply input your email address using the text box provided on the Website & you’ll receive a list of hacks your data has been part of. The Site not only gives you information about each hack, it also gives you the URL on the Dark Web that reveals your information.
The tool also lists the largest hacks that have ever occurred, & it’s truly scary to read the numbers. For instance, the Collection 1 hack resulted in a leak of 772,904,991 account details, while the WattPad hack exposed 268,765,495 accounts. This is to say nothing of the Facebook hack – 509,458,528 accounts leaked.
The Website offers users an option to subscribe to their notification service that will let them know if they’re part of any future breach. They also offer a password management app called 1Password, which generates secure, unique passwords for various accounts.
This tool offered by Google is really useful. To use Google’s tools, users need to sign in using their Google account & input their email address. Google then outputs a list of Sites that are controlled by a Google sign in. It’s interesting because you might have signed up to a Website that you’re no longer using & Google gives you the option to delete your information from that site.
Google also offers users the opportunity to check for compromised, repeated or weak passwords & gives instructions on how to fix any issues they find.
Other tools
- Firefox Monitor : essentially the same functionality as Have I Been Pwned.
- BreachAlarm : also similar to Have I Been Pwned
General Precautions Users Should Take
Use a secure password manager such as LastPass to secure your accounts. Change your passwords often. Use a VPN, such as ExpressVPN, when you browse or use a safe browser such as Brave. Don’t use weak or common passwords such as “password123”, EVER!
