In today’s digital world, securing online accounts is crucial, and a security expert has shared essential advice on how to do so effectively.
With a plethora of online accounts ranging from emails and social media to shopping sites and apps, most of us have more accounts than we can remember.
Typically, users are notified of a data breach through email or phone alerts, but sometimes these breaches are discovered only after some time.
For instance, a breach in April this year led to the theft of 183 million passwords, a staggering figure that highlights the importance of security vigilance.
The breach was brought to light by Have I Been Pwned (HIBP), a site that monitors data breaches and alerts users about them.
Australian cyber expert Troy Hunt manages this site.
An October 21 report on HIBP informed users: “The data contained 183M unique email addresses alongside the websites they were entered into and the passwords used.
“After normalising and deduplicating the data, 183 million unique email addresses remained, each linked to the website where the credentials were captured, and the password used. This dataset is now searchable in HIBP by email address, password, domain, and the site on which the credentials were entered.”
Gmail was significantly impacted among the many affected providers.
Hunt explained to Mail Online that ‘all the major providers have email addresses in there’, noting, “They’re from everywhere you could imagine, but Gmail always features heavily.”
A Google spokesperson told The Sun that HIBP’s report ‘covers known infostealer activity that targets many different types of Internet activity’.
They clarified: “There is not a new, Gmail-specific attack at play. We protect users from these attacks with layers of defenses, including resetting passwords when we come across credential theft like this.”
A common mistake people make is using the same password for everything.
DTP Group reports that over six million people in Britain admit to this practice. Only about 19 percent of survey participants use unique passwords for each account.
Guy Hawkridge, Head of IT & Security at DTP Group, encourages the use of multiple passwords.
He cautioned: “Password reuse remains one of the most consistent and preventable drivers of account takeover.
“Our survey shows that a minority of people take the simple step of using unique credentials, that single behaviour change, combined with multifactor authentication and password managers, would reduce a significant portion of credential-stuffing and phishing success.”