It’s 2019 and hackers are not messing around. The findings of this recent data breach collection prove that. As technology advances, cyber-hacking continues to grow with it. It’s not just businesses; everyday people are getting their information hacked on a regular basis.
You’ve Got Mail
Users need to stay proactive in preventing their accounts from data breaches and other forms of cyber-attacks. The discovery of this particular data breach collection should heighten your awareness of email and password protection. A security researcher, Troy Hunt was the first to discover this hidden data breach list. But what did this data breach list include?
The Holy Grail of Emails & Passwords
This data breach collection was an 87GB data dump. We will get into numbers later to understand the significance of that. When Hunt came across the collection of email and password combinations, he was able to confirm that it was a stockpile of info from several data breaches over time. Let’s get into the damages of the data breach.
The Numbers
- 1,160,253,228 unique email and password combinations in total
- 21,222,975 unique passwords alone
This information was said to be taken from thousands of different sources. Some of the information was from popular data breaches in the past.
- 360M of these accounts were from the MySpace data breach of 2008
- 164M of these accounts were derived from the 2016 LinkedIn data breach
- Around 140M of the email addresses/passwords in the collection were never seen before
What Does This Mean for You?
If you see any strange activity on your accounts, change your login information asap. To prevent yourself from being a victim of a data breach, investigate password manager programs. 1Password and LastPass are highly recommended to ensure password and account protection. Platforms like this will limit hackers from using “credential stuffing” attacks. Credential stuffing is the process of using someone’s passwords to gain access to several of their accounts.
Final Takeaways
Be mindful of the latest hacking methods and proactive by protecting your personal information online. There is so much you can do to prevent victimization in the event of a data breach.
The EMPIST Effect
Software provides a gateway to further business innovation. The more that you and your company do to stay on top of software news and actually embrace more software within your business, the more benefits your business will reap. Whether you explore an online ticketing system for customer support (like EMPIST’s own Deskware) or a cloud technology platform, there’s no doubt that it will show more efficient results at your business. Give your company a competitive advantage with the right scaling software. Evolve with software and grow efficiently.
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