have you been pwned?

Have you been pwned?

You probably don’t what I am asking right?

There is a great website called haveibeenpwned that tells people whether or not their email has fallen victim to a data breach.

All you have to do is enter your email address into the search bar. It is so detailed that it even tells you which websites the data breaches happened on.

Let me start off by explaining what a data breach is…

A data breach is when hackers find a weak point in a website’s security, and they break through to the sensitive information. Once they are inside the website they will gather all of the personal information of the users on that website.

So, for example, if Target would fall victim to a data breach, the user’s information (email, password, etc.) would fall into the hands of bad actors. That means your data could be at risk.

If you searched your email address and found out you were victim of a data breach (which is pretty likely), I would recommend you start re-evaluating your security.

Consider changing the passwords on some of your accounts and use a password manager if you don’t already. I also highly recommend you get 2 factor authentication for your websites.

This is all covered in detail in the course.

If you’re email address hasn’t been part of a data breach, you should still make sure you are using proper security measures. Because if you are reusing passwords, all it takes is one data breach to compromise all of your accounts.

I recommend that you check out haveibeenpwned.com and take some extra steps on protecting your online security.

I hope you enjoyed this email! Please share our blog with friends and family.

Thank you!

Eric Meder