5 Million Email Accounts Hacked, Mine Included

Just recently, iCloud had been hacked, exposing nude photos of over a hundred popular female celebrities all over the web. This week, it’s 5 million email addresses including mine. Tonight, I received an email from WordPress asking me to reset my password associated with their site because that email address/account was amongst those listed. So I did.

My email, particularly Gmail account isn’t directly hacked because it’s on 2-way verification, but the same email address associated to WP is the one hacked. This, along with millions of other email addresses used to register profiles on several websites had also been hacked. The list had even been posted originally at a Russian forum.

If you’d like to find out if you’re email address or profile in some website is included in the list, you may refer to these resources:

have i been pwned?

is leaked?

The former simply says if your account had been compromised and how, generally. When I entered my email address, it did indicate that it had been pwned but on only one website, which was WP. The latter on the other hand even mentioned the first two characters of the password I’ve used on WordPress.

How to Protect Your Account

Most websites with accounts compromised had or will send email updates urging the affected user to change their password. Even if you didn’t receive any warning via email, it’s best to still check your email account through the resources above and change your password if your account had been compromised. It’s recommended to nominate a strong password that’s not easy to guess. It shouldn’t be anything associated to you personally like you or your family’s birthday, names, location, pets, hobbies, etc. It should be a strong password comprised of letters (capitalized or not) and numbers as well as special characters. Also, don’t save passwords on browsers because they too can be hacked. If you can use browser functions that don’t save history, such as the Incognito Window in Chrome, that’s even better. Lastly, make sure to regularly run updated security software on your computer.

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Posted by Maria Marilyn. Follow me on Twitter @marcyscreed. I'll follow back.