Every single day there seems to be another hack. A few weeks ago, we learned about one of the biggest data breaches in history thus far, where 117 million LinkedIn email addresses and passwords were stolen. And just today, we learned that 32 million Twitter users' credentials are being sold online. These things happen more often than you'd think, and they're not always immediately publicized.
So, what can you do? While you can make a password as long and as complicated as possible, your efforts are fruitless if a company doesn't store that information properly. And unfortunately, you have zero control over that. But you do have control over one thing: where and when you use a password.
If you reuse the same password for multiple websites, and then one site gets hacked, that means that any other website you use with that same password can also be hacked easily — in an instant.
And if you think, "Oh, yeah, but that will never happen to me " — think again. We've rounded up the biggest, worst, and most notorious hacks from the past few years. Chances are you've had an account with at least one of these sites, which means your data has been exposed to, well, anyone who cares to find it (or buy it).
For a good reminder on why you should never reuse a password, and how to make the annoying task of managing your passwords much easier, read on. And then you can check if your email address has been pawned in any of the previously mentioned hacks, here.
Whelp, hackers reportedly used malware to steal the login credentials for 32 million Twitter accounts. Twitter wasn't actually compromised — it seems that users had their password information collected by infected Firefox or Chrome browsers. So, the good news here is, if you only access Twitter through its Mac or smartphone app, you should be safe.
Photo: Courtesy Twitter.
Myspace
Myspace may seem like ancient history, but if there's any chance you still use the same password as you did back in 2006, you could be in trouble. On June 11, 2013, 360 million Myspace users' passwords were hacked — but we only just recently learned that the hack even happened. If you used Myspace before that date, chances are your email address and password were among those obtained.
Fling
In this case, hackers got way more than just a password and email address. Dating and hookup app, Fling, where much of people's personal accounts have information of the X-rated variety, was hacked in May. The hacker, known as "Peace," accessed millions of accounts and lots of information, including email addresses, birthdays, IP addresses, passwords, sexual desires, and more personal details which were then sold on the dark web. Victims have had their darkest fetishes, images, and messages all stolen from right out under them, likely without having noticed.
Photo: Courtesy Fling.
What's safer than professional networking on LinkedIn? Apparently, a lot of things. In 2012, LinkedIn was majorly hacked, and the company thought it had remedied the issue by resetting the passwords of the affected users. Unfortunately, the breach was far larger than LinkedIn originally thought: Hackers gained access to more than 117 million emails and encrypted passwords of users, which were found being sold on a dark web marketplace called The Real Deal.
Tumblr
Tumblr suffered a massive data breach in 2013, but only recently has the extent of the hack been discovered. The data that was obtained included 65 million unique emails and passwords, being traded and sold in the digital underground web. While Tumblr reset the passwords for affected accounts, if you use your pre-2013 Tumblr password anywhere else… You guessed it, time to change your passwords.
GIF: Courtesy Tumblr.
Badoo
Badoo is one of the most popular dating apps in the world, and while the company reports that its databases have not been compromised, some users have found their account information up for sale on the dark web. Last year, 57 million email addresses, cell phone numbers, and Facebook usernames cropped up online, possibly tied to Badoo or another dating site, Zoosk — the source of the hack is still not clear. And just this week, usernames, dates of birth, cracked passwords, and email addresses of Badoo users (around 127 million of them) were again found in a data dump — in this case, too, the how and the when of the hack are still unclear.
Photo: Courtesy Badoo.
Password Managers
So, what can you do to help prevent your accounts from being hacked? Using a password manager — such as LastPass (pictured) or 1Password — is one of your best lines of defense. It is a free application that acts as a safety-deposit box for all your passwords. You can install it on any device, and it will secure and remember all your passwords for all of your sites, so you don't have to. You can easily manage all your login information and safeguard your data with secure encryption algorithms.
Photo: Courtesy LastPass.Like what you see? How about some more R29 goodness, right here?
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