Has your email / username been compromised in a data breach? ~use this interesting website to check if your personal data has leaked

What is this all about?

You know how we tend to sign up on so many websites using our email addresses, and sometimes we even use the same passwords on multiple websites(which is a highly dangerous thing to do). Well the really crappy news is that a bunch of websites get hacked every now and then, and when a websites database is leaked, it might contain your personal information(hopefully encrypted), now this information can be anything from personal bio to passwords and bank account details. We definitely need to know when such a thing happens so we can immediately change our passwords on the breached website, hence preventing access to our account from others who might know our passwords now, and in the worst scenario change our passwords on all our accounts across the internet in case we are stupid enough to use the same password everywhere.

Woah that's a serious issue! how do we know if our emails have been compromised?

Luckily this awesome website called "have I been pwned" keeps a track of most website breaches, and will tell you if your info has been leaked from one of the websites you've signed up on, the date of the breach, and information on the nature of the content that has been leaked (such as names, passwords, ip addresses, etc). The working of this site is pretty simple, visit the site by clicking the link below:

https://haveibeenpwned.com/

Once you're there you should land on the page in the image below, type your email in the text field and press enter or click on "pwned?"

enter your email or username

list of sites that your info has been leaked from

If your email has been "pwned" the screen will go red and it will give you a list of breaches you were pwned in. however if your none of your credentials have been leaked in a data breach (at least not from the breaches listed there), the screen will turn green and state "no pwnage found".

I haven't been pwned.

good job.

I have been pwned, what do I do?

No need to panic, your data probably hasn't been misused yet, immediately take these steps to ensure your security. Firstly look up the "compromised data" against the breached site to see what data was leaked. Now if only email ids or some useless info was leaked then you probably don't have to be alarmed. but if important stuff like passwords were leaked, then the first thing to do would be to go to the breached site and change your password there(don't use the same password as your other accounts). Secondly, make sure that none of your accounts across the web have the same password as the leaked one. And that's pretty much it.

How to prevent getting affected by these data breaches?

You should take some measures to make sure these data breaches don't f**k you up.

• Never use the same password for multiple accounts, especially with accounts that contain bank account details and other important stuff.
• Don't sign up on every damn website unless it's required or if it's a really good site. make sure it's a trusted and secure website,
• Don't use your primary email for signing up on websites that you don't plan on frequently visiting, consider using temporary disposable emails (>>check out the post on disposable emails).
• Don't put important/private info on your accounts unless it's required.
• sacrifice potatoes to Satan every fortnight.(this one's a joke, in case you don't understand humor)

That should keep your info safe and secure.

Be sure to share your views, ideas and feedback in the comments and feel free to ask any questions whether it is regarding the topic or even if it's totally unrelated. I'll be sure to respond to every query. Also, please do tell me if I made any mistakes or typos so I could fix em.

And that's all for today~