Data breaches are becoming all too common, begging the question: How safe is the information you put online?
The short answer? Not very.
Millions of American's have fallen victim to hackers, and the numbers are growing. Hackers have breached popular companies such as Dropbox, Dominos, Yahoo, Snapchat, Comcast and countless others.
That's what motivated Microsoft Regional Director Troy Hunt to create this website.
"I created Have I been pwned? as a free resource for anyone to quickly assess if they may have been put at risk due to an online account of theirs having been compromised or "pwned" in a data breach. I wanted to keep it dead simple to use and entirely free so that it could be of maximum benefit to the community."
What is a "breach"?
A "breach" is an incident where a hacker illegally obtains data from a vulnerable system, usually by exploiting weaknesses in the software.
Where does the data come from?
The site aggravates data from website breaches which have been made publicly available creating a searchable database.
How does the site work?
The site is very simple, you plug in your email address or username and the site will tell you whether or not your information has been breached in a large-scale hack. If your information has been breached, it informs you of which breach you fell victim to and what information they may have obtained during the hack.
The site makes an important note for users: Just because your email address wasn't found on the site, doesn't mean that is hasn't been compromised in another breach. Many breaches never result in the public release of data and indeed many breaches even go entirely undetected. "Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence".
To check if you have an account that has been compromised in a data breach, click here.
Still confused? Check out the site's FAQ page to help you clear things up.
