Troy Hunt, a web security expert, created Have I been pwned? as a free resource for people 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.
It’s really simple, you just type in your email address and it is checked against a massive amount of addresses known to have been breached in an online hack. If you’re in the clear you get this message:
If you’ve been compromised you get this:
This site came about after what at the time, was the largest ever single breach of customer accounts — Adobe. Hunt often did a post-breach analysis of user credentials and kept finding the same accounts exposed over and over again, often with the same passwords which then put the victims at further risk of their other accounts being compromised.
Data breaches are rampant and many people don’t appreciate the scale or frequency with which they occur. By aggregating the data Hunt hopes that it not only helps victims learn of compromises of their accounts, but also highlights the severity of the risks of online attacks on today’s internet.
Click here or on any of the images to check your email address.