Is your personal information on the internet secure?

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Arguably the greatest invention of the 21st century. The internet is an endless source of information, communication, and socialisation. However, with the great also comes the not so great. In the first half of 2019, Forbes reported over 4 billion personal records were exposed by data breaches.1

What is a data breach? 

When you sign up for an account on a website you provide your email address, create a password and sometimes, supply your mobile phone number. Your personal information then gets stored in secure servers with the millions (or even billions) of information supplied by other users. Every now and again, hackers will find a way into these secure serves and export the information contained therein. Once they have these details, they usually sell the information on to other scammers and hackers for a big price.

How to tell if your information has been compromised 

Have I Been Pwned, a website created for users to check whether their personal data has been compromised by data breaches. Has recorded over 9 billion account breaches. The biggest of these breaches being Adobe, who saw over 153 million user records stolen by hackers in 2013.

How can you protect your privacy online? 

One of the best ways you can protect your privacy online is to make sure you have a separate password for each website you have an account with. Further to this, creating a password that incorporates letters, numbers, and symbols can increase the strength of the password. Another way to safeguard your privacy online is by investing in a one password account. These accounts store all of your passwords under encryption in one place2. So you only need to remember the master password to log in to your account.

References


1 Winder, D. Data Breaches Expose 4.1 Billion Reocrds in First Six Months of 2019. Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/daveywinder/2019/08/20/data-breaches-expose-41-billion-records-in-first-six-months-of-2019/#67c390d1bd54 20 August 2019. ↩
2 Berls, B. These shocking facts about lastpass will make your jaw drop. Bruce B News. https://www.brucebnews.com/2018/10/these-shocking-facts-about-lastpass-will-make-your-jaw-drop/ 1 October 2018. ↩

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