The following online resource is referenced in the below: Have I Been Pwned
If you would like to check your current passwords and email accounts against known breaches and data dumps please navigate to this Password Integrity Checker website.
Note: The word 'pwned' is pronounced owned or p-owned and has origins in gaming culture as a derivation of the word 'owned' due to the proximity of the 'o' and 'p' keys. It means that one has been bested in a wrong or unfair way.
The 'Have I Been Pwned' website is a great resource developed by Troy Hunt and provided as a free service to the public in order to help educate people on the severity of cyber crime and help protect data by informing of a breach.As a bonus: to verify if your email address has ever appeared in a data breach or a dark web data dump, navigate to: Email Integrity Check. and follow the steps.
- 2019 Collection Data Breach. 2.2 billion usernames and passwords from high-profile companies including LinkedIn and Dropbox was leaked.
- 2019 Alibaba Data Breach. 1.1 billion packets of user data was illegally stolen from the e-commerce giant.
- 2018 Aadhaar Data Breach. The passwords, identity and biometric information of 1.1 billion Indian citizens was stolen and exposed.
- 2021 LinkedIn Data Breach. 700 million user records were released on the dark web with data reportedly affecting 90% of active LinkedIn users.
- 2019 First American Financial Corp. Data Breach. The passwords and user information of 885 million users was stolen.
- 2019 Verifications.io Data Breach. This leaked 800 million personal and business account records. The company was used to verify email addresses used in advertising campaigns actually belonged to real people.
- 2017 Equifax Data Breach. 605 million records and extremely sensitive data from almost 200 million people was all released on the dark web in a data dump.
- 2019 Facebook Data Breach. 540 million user account records were stolen and leaked. This included, the users interests, likes, most frequented pages, passwords, DOBs, mobile numbers and much more.