How to know if hackers have your personal data

Data theft hacks are very common. Personal data often ends up in nature. Maybe even yours. Here’s how to know if you’ve been affected.

Last year was the worst year ever in terms of data theft, cyberattacks continue to wreak havoc on governments and private companies. The founder of NVIDIA announced an attack on him, which led to the publication of a large amount of very sensitive data. Hackers target large corporations, software companies, and even apps on your phone. Your personal data is at risk.

If your personal data has been compromised, you probably won’t know until the company that processes the same data tells you. And by then, your date of birth, social security number, credit or medical card information will have already been disclosed and possibly used.

Any stolen information that directs thieves to your identity can allow hackers to make online purchases, open loans in your name, make any kind of medical inquiries, etc. Billions of credentials are available on the dark web, often offered by hackers in batches.

You cannot prevent websites from being hacked, but you can check to see if your information has been compromised and limit the damage if it does. First of all, if you use a password manager that creates unique passwords for you, you can be sure that if a particular site is hacked, the stolen password will not give access to other sites on which you have an account. A good password manager can also help you manage all of your login information, which is very useful in your daily life.

After a cyberattack, tracking tools can tell you which credentials are on the dark web, allowing you to take action to limit the damage. Here’s how to use two free tools – Google Password Checkup and Mozilla Firefox Monitor – to find out if your email addresses and passwords have been compromised and how to respond.

How to use Google password verification

As part of their password management service, Google offers a free password checker tool that checks to see if your usernames and passwords have been exposed.

1. If you use the Google password service to track your credentials in Chrome or Android, go to the dedicated site and click “Check Access Password”.
2. Click Confirm Passwords and sign in.
3. Enter your Google account password.
4. After a while, Google will display any issues it finds, including compromised, reused credentials, and weak passwords.
5. Each reused or weak password has a Change button next to it to change it to something stronger.

How to use Mozilla Firefox Monitor

The Mozilla Firefox Monitor service can help you find out if your email addresses have been in known data breaches.

1. To get started , go to a special page.
2. Enter your email address and click Check for Data Leaks. If an email has been hacked since 2007, Monitor will let you know along with other disclosed data.
3. Under each vulnerability, you can click Learn more about this vulnerability to see what was stolen and actions recommended by Mozilla, such as updating your password.

You can also register to have Monitor notify you as soon as your email is found to be hacked. The monitor scans email addresses in open data packets and tells you if it finds yours.

1. At the bottom of the Firefox Monitor page, click Subscribe to Alerts.
2. If necessary, create a Firefox account.
3. Click “Connect”to view the summary.
4. At the bottom of the page, you can add other subscription addresses. Mozilla will send you an email to each address you add with the subject “Firefox Monitor found your information in these violations”when it finds an email address in the stolen data package, with instructions to follow.

Other leads follow

In addition to Mozilla and Google’s tools, you can go further to be notified of possible data breaches concerning you.

Visualize your digital footprint. Bitdefender offers a dashboard with its Digital Identity Protection subscription that shows you where your personal information has appeared online. The tool also identifies data thefts your data has been caught in, informs you when it’s in the news, and suggests actions you need to take to protect your data. The system even tells you if your data is on the dark web and tells you if someone is trying to impersonate you on social media.

Follow his banking movements. Feel free to check your bank accounts regularly for suspicious transactions. This may be a sign that someone has access to your personal data.