Data breaches happen daily, in too many places at once to keep count. As Wiki describes, a data breach is an intentional or unintentional release of secure or private/confidential information (for example, password) to untrusted environment – confidential data leak. Below is a list of data breaches which happened when data compiled from various sources, including press reports, government news releases, and mainstream news articles was used.
The list is here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_data_breaches
1.4 billion passwords have been found in a single database
Experts found a database with 1.4 billion text credentials (login / password pair). In fact, this is the largest database of credentials detected lately. The size of this database is 41GB and the total amount of credentials (login / password pair) is 1,400,553,869 records. All the passwords are in text form, and the most terrifying fact is that most of them are still valid. Almost all users who were interviewed by researchers confirmed that their passwords were valid.
Check if your credentials are in that database
Fortunately, you do not need to dig the Dark Internet to find out if your password has been leaked. Just several weeks ago a Brazilian electronics engineer & web developer Daniel Andrade created a tool to find password information easily. So, you can always check if your passwords are in this database. Passwords can be found by typing your e-mail address here https://pwdquery.xyz
Hostens reminds you that this database contains captured passwords from such websites and services or even games like LinkedIn, Mail.ru, Yahoo, RuneScape, MySpace, Twitter, LastFM, etc. If you find your or your friend’s password in this database, make sure to change it; and even more importantly, try to remember if you used the same password elsewhere. On haveibeenpwned.com you can also check if there are any other sites (or services) you have used and have been hacked on.
How to protect your password?
Hostens team kindly reminds you that it is very important to create a really strong password. There are several important actions which can help you to ensure more effective protection of your account data. Remember these golden rules:
The length of a password is very important. Passwords should have at least 10 symbols as well as consist of more than one word. We advise you to create passwords based on phrases which mean something to you, and you can easily remember. A strong password is not necessarily a combination of random characters, it is a sequence of characters which is difficult to crack.
Enable two-factor authentication for your account if there is such option in the system. Learn more about how to enhance your Hostens account security here https://www.hostens.com/knowledgebase/how-to-enhance-account-security/
Each site (account) should have its own unique password!
Change passwords regularly.
Do not share your password with anyone.
Make sure your antivirus is working properly.