The hot commodity on the Internet: login data! It's a daily game of cat and mouse: Hackers attack databases of large companies, sometimes cracking them and stealing users' email addresses or usernames and passwords. Shortly afterwards, they publish it on the Internet so that others can also use the data for illegal activities.

the essentials in brief

  • Reports of data leaks and hacker attacks keep making the rounds.
  • Have any of your access data been stolen somewhere?
  • You can check it out on three trustworthy websites!

At the beginning of 2019, the publication of private data from politicians and celebrities made headlines. They are likely to have been collected from various sources on the Internet and some may also have been obtained phishing They always succeed on a grand scale. An example of this is Facebook: At Easter 2021 it became known that data from more than 530 million users had been published. Around 6 million Facebook members from Germany are said to be affected.

Trusted leak checker portals

Then you ask yourself: is my data included? There are tools, for example for the Firefox and Safari browsers, that can tell you. You can also search for so-called leaks of your data on websites. We would like to introduce you to three of them – source: checked4you

  1. HPI Identity Leak Checker from the Hasso Plattner Institute (HPI) at the University of Potsdam
    Language: German
    Instructions: Enter your email address in the search field.
    You will then receive an email in which you can read whether login details with your email address have been published on the Internet. Information about which accounts the data comes from: Partial
    user accounts (according to the operators): around 12.8 billion, updates if necessary
    Address: sec.hpi.uni-potsdam.de/leak-checker/search
  2. Identity Leak Checker from EIDI at the University of Bonn
    Language: German
    Instructions: Enter your email address in the search field.
    You will then receive an email in which you can read whether login details with your email address have been published on the Internet. Information about which accounts the data comes from: Yes
    User accounts (according to the operator): no information
    Address: https://leakchecker.uni-bonn.de/
  3. Have I been pwned? by Troy Hunt, Internet security expert and blogger
    Language: English
    Instructions: Enter your email address or username in the search field.
    The page then shows whether login details with your details have been published on the Internet. Info about which accounts the data comes from: Yes
    User accounts (according to the operators): around 11.9 billion, updates if necessary
    Address: haveibeenpwned.com

The pages mentioned do not claim to be complete. This means: Even if you get the message that your login details are not public, they may still be floating around somewhere visible on the internet. The pages do not search the entire Internet, but rather contain data sets that the operators have found on the Internet.

What you should pay attention to with such services

Before you use other websites that advertise about stolen logins, you should make sure that

  • the providers are reputable (i.e. have a corresponding reputation and have, for example, meaningful FAQs or a data protection declaration on the site),
  • Your entered data will not be stored in order to resell it or use it for other purposes,
  • Your data will not be stored longer than it takes to compare the databases.

As with all websites, the following applies to such offers: If you have a bad feeling about using them, don't use them!

What to do if your data has been published

  • Change the password of the affected accounts immediately.
  • a strong password with upper and lower case letters, numbers and special characters. More information about this can be found here !
  • If you use the same password elsewhere, be sure to change it there too! It is best to use a separate password for each account.
  • If possible: activate two-factor login. Many people already offer this: For example, you enter a cell phone number and you will receive an SMS with a code every time you try to log in. Only when you type it correctly will you be able to access your account. Annoying, but safe.

Source: Consumer advice center NRW / checked4you

Please be careful here too! Ignore phishing emails about “unauthorized activities”!


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Notes:
1) This content reflects the current state of affairs at the time of publication. The reproduction of individual images, screenshots, embeds or video sequences serves to discuss the topic. 2) Individual contributions were created through the use of machine assistance and were carefully checked by the Mimikama editorial team before publication. ( Reason )