In case you didn't catch this on the news yesterday, a massive data breach was discovered on Thursday.  There were 770 million email addresses that are involved and millions of them include the passwords to those email accounts.  

 

 

...then let me paint a scenario that will likely tell you "so what" and why you should do something now. 

 

Suppose YOUR email address is one that a hacker now has the password to login.  They go to your bank's website, click the "lost password" button, and enter your email address.  A few seconds later, they watch as an email comes in from your bank with a link they can click to reset your bank password.  They click it, enter their new password for your bank account and begin the process of emptying it out.  

 

 

You can check to see if your email was in the data breach revealed on Thursday by going to this website...

 

 

and entering your email address then click the enter key.  If you get a red page saying your email has been "pwned" then you definitely should change your email address PASSWORD today!  The red screen that means your email is included in the breach will look similar to this...

 

 

 

...then make a list of all the important websites that you need to change your passwords on next.  At a minimum that should be your bank and credit card and mortgage company sites.  Talk about this with family and friend and see what places THEY are changing their passwords at as well. Their ideas may trigger a website you forgot to put on your list. 

 

As for the passwords themselves here are a couple rules to remember...

 

1) NEVER (and I mean NEVER) use the same password on two different websites  

 

2) Do NOT use a password like "password" or "123456" or "baseball" or anything else that is a simple word.  Hackers have a program that list the top several thousand clever passwords and they can run that list in a split second on your sites. 

 

3) Set a date every year when you will change all your important passwords again. It could be today plus 1 year or it could be later this year but do it every year.  

 

One final note... even if your email does NOT get the red screen, it would be a good idea for you to do all the above anyway.  While this breach has been discovered, you can bet there are many more breaches that have not yet been found and your email address may already have been compromised on one of those other hacks.  Take this seriously now or you may wish you had later. 

 

Larry

 

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