Collection #1: 773 million emails and their passwords
A huge list of leaked emails and passwords is circulating. Check yours, and stop reusing passwords for good.
Last week a security researcher reported Collection #1: a set of files with about 773 million email addresses and 21 million unique passwords, compiled from many older breaches and shared on hacking forums.
Most of it isn’t new. That’s the point: old leaks get combined and reused forever, and attackers feed them into automated login attempts on email, banking and shopping sites.
What to do:
- Check your email on a breach notification service such as Have I Been Pwned.
- If a password you still use appears, change it everywhere you used it.
- Start using a password manager, so every site gets its own password.
- Turn on two-factor authentication on email first. It resets everything else.
For companies: check new passwords against lists of breached ones, and watch for many failed logins from the same places.