Passwords are leaked fairly regularly, and that means you might need to check your passwords more often than you’d like. Try it today.
If you’re a regular web citizen, there’s a good chance you have many accounts across this wide world web of ours. From Amazon to Netflix to Adobe to Google to Microsoft to Facebook to Twitter to Dropbox and plenty of others, if you use a service that’s free or paid, or simply sign up to a newsletter, you very likely have a password set up somewhere, and it may have been leaked or hacked at one point in time.
It’s not just you, it’s everywhere. Everything has been leaked and hacked at one point, and so you’ve probably been sent an alert to change your passwords, that this has become rather commonplace to find out that your accounts need a change.
It might even have come from a proactive check on something like HaveIBeenPwned or even through your web browser, because there’s a good chance that if you’ve been online for over five years, you’ve had a password leaked.
However, that just makes it more important to get password hygiene the best it can be, and look to making them more complex and harder to guess. Unique passwords are a better approach overall, because it means if one is leaked from one service, the risk is minimal for it affecting everything else in your life.
“Passwords are of course a key part of our digital lives, enabling people to gain quick access to a variety of online platforms, accounts and devices,” said Raj Samani, Chief Scientist and Fellow for McAfee.
“However, it can be easy to take them for granted and forget the basics of password hygiene during our busy lives, particularly now as we have so many accounts to keep on top in order to get on with our day-to-day activities,” he said.
This week sees World Password Day (May 6), making it an ideal time to check whether your passwords need a change, and there’s a good bet some will.
Whether you have your browser do the work for you or use a service, checking whether your passwords have been compromised is an ideal approach to working out if you need a new password for some of your favourite services, especially if you’ve used the same one across many.
It’s also an ideal time to check out multi-factor authentication at the same time, turning on this feature so you less reliant on one security measure like the password, and need your phone or a specific app to help log you into the service you’re using.
