How To Know Whether Your Account Has Been Safe Till Now”

[billyhaleym]

You are trusting various internet companies with your passwords. With data breaches becoming more common like the following 👇

https://www.vice.com/en_us/article/a3qpk5/t-mobile-hack-data-breach-api-customer-data

https://www.businessinsider.com/quora-says-it-had-massive-hack-that-may-have-affected100-million-users-2018-12?IR=T

is your data safe?
How to know whether your password has been stolen? And what do you do if the unfortunate has happened?

Have you been hacked?
Coming to the point straight away, have you been hacked? Lets find out:

Find out if you’ve been part of a data breach with Firefox Monitor. Sign up for alerts about future breaches ➡ https://monitor.firefox.com
   
Go to the 👆 above website and enter your email address. Don’t worry about your privacy or safety, Mozilla(a well known non-profit organization) maintains this site. If you are greeted with the message “This email appeared in zero data breaches” then your account has been safe until now, but if your data has been affected with any of the previous data breaches, it will display an option showing the breaches

If your data has been breached, there is one important thing you should know before you start freaking out. There is still a good chance for your data to be safe. To know how, you should understand how companies store your password.

How is your data stored:

Every online account has a password associated with it. When you register with your password, they are not stored as raw data in the company’s database. Instead, they are fed to a hashing (https://www.wired.com/2016/06/hacker-lexicon-password-hashing/algorithm) to create some gibberish value called hash, this process is called Hashing. The Hash generated is unique to your password and your passwords cannot be traced back from them. Therefore, hackers will be seeing a bunch of random letters, rather than your password.

You can join this URL for more exposure 👇
By Pluke — Own work, CC0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18296416

Every time you enter your password, a hash is generated and compared with the hash stored in the database.


Should you care:
If no actual passwords are being stored, then should you worry about your hashes being hacked? Yes. Storing hashes instead of passwords is not completely foolproof. Once hackers get their hands on the hashes, they try to find out your password using various techniques ( https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/5-common-tactics-hack-passwords/ ).

Yes, your passwords cannot be traced back, but they try to generate the same hash value by feeding random data to the hashing algorithm. Since each hash is unique to a password, when the hackers manage to generate the exact hash value, they have cracked your password.

How long it takes to crack your password depends on the strength of your password. This password guessing is done with powerful computers, so it’s easy for them to crack the common passwords. When your passwords are long and complex, it will take them centuries to crack your password. In other words, it will be impossible for them to crack a long and complex password, at least for now.

What can you do:
If you have been affected by a data breach, don’t panic. Change your password immediately. Even if your data has been safe until now, there is no guarantee that it will remain the same way. To be safe, replace your weaker password with a stronger one. To create a strong password, several websites suggest having a minimum of 8 characters containing at least one capital letter and a numeric digit. Also, you would have heard advises like use first letter of every word in a sentence (I am in love with the shape of you ==>Iailwtsoy). These are a good technique to create a complex password but it isn’t long enough.

I suggest a better idea, instead of those first letters, use the whole sentence. This usage of a sentence as a password is called passphrase. You can create a sentence of your own such as “I will become fit before next year”(with or without space). An added benefit is the extra motivation you will be getting each time you type the password every day😉. Thank me later.

Try to associate different sentence with different accounts. One for your Facebook, one for your Snapchat, one for your Insta etc. Even if your password has been cracked, the hacker won’t be able to access your other accounts.

Simply adding a recovery phone number to your Google Account can block up to 100% of automated bots, 99% of bulk phishing attacks, and 66% of targeted attacks — Google Security Blog (https://security.googleblog.com/2019/05/new-research-how-effective-is-basic.html)

Also enable Two Factor Authentication(2FA), wherever possible. Two Factor Authentication is the process of using two different methods to verify the user. To know more, click ➡ https://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-and-why-to-use-two-factor-authentication/

Conclusion:
Everything is becoming smart nowadays. Your phone, TV, speaker, even your toothbrush has become smart. Isn’t it time for your password to become smart enough to protect your data. Change your password right away. As long as you have an uncommon & long password, unique to each account with two factor authentication turned on, You can stay cool😎 even if data breaches occur everyday. Have a safe and secure digital life.

Source ➡ https://hackernoon.com/how-to-know-whether-your-account-has-been-safe-till-now-a864b8098ef0

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[ccsang]

Thanks for the article, I'm sure that most of us personal information has been compromised in a data breach, I've check before and found that one of my email address has been compromised. But I don't care too much because I'm believed that 2fa is safe to protect all of the important account.

[pinoy.bolanon]

Good to know that you posted this article it helps a lot anyway, because last year i encountered a lot of hacking in my exchanges account. and i discovered lately that some fake airdrops, ICO's are responsible for hacking in my accounts, its really hard to keep it safe all our accounts, what i have now is self awareness, of what is right and what is not.

[Felic43]

I really appreciate this article it will help many people by the way private key is always important to be kept safe don't allow third party to know your private key.

[DigitalTerminal]

Every week companies are loosing information about their users. I can't believe in privacy nowadays.

[jrrsparkles]

If we upload any data into internet then it becomes unsafe even if the sites claiming that they are completely secured.And even I know some of the ethical hackers who said that don't use internet for any kind of sensitive information to be stored or even to transmit.

[Wale777]

Posting such informative and educating post like this is commendable having said that, it's very important to always be on the lookout for any breach of data because no matter what or  how stronger the password is it can still be tampered with but most importantly make your password as strong as possible

[Nolimitz84]

Thank you for the article. Indeed, many people use passwords in an ordinary way.I try to create different complex passwords for serious services and platforms.For short-term sites that I'm not going to visit more than 2 times I create the same password.even if it's stolen, I won't be upset.2fa if the site provides,then of course you need to protect yourself with this service.

[semes]

You are trusting various internet companies with your passwords. With data breaches becoming more common like the following 👇

I've never trusted any platforms. Even seems trustable ones. Security breaches are always visible. Therefore I think you should always use different passwords.

[Iykecollins]

Very valid and educative information, I had tho that the password of every site is stored at the back end of the owner. About security, have learnt to use a very strong password, email and Google authentication 2fa for account protection, have gotten notifications a number of times on my different accounts but they hackers are not able to penetrate

[JCviggen]

Very valid and educative information, I had tho that the password of every site is stored at the back end of the owner. About security, have learnt to use a very strong password, email and Google authentication 2fa for account protection, have gotten notifications a number of times on my different accounts but they hackers are not able to penetrate

2fa works pretty good and I believe that this is the most reliable protection tool at the moment. it is important to keep your phone with 2FA in an inaccessible place

[lobat999]

Once we go online, we should be aware that there are no 100 percent safe accounts on internet and will never be. Instead, we should observe good security practices to minimize our accounts from being compromised. Also, companies are implementing different security features like 2FA, email verification and notifications and that we should utilize them all in order to give us more protection and its important that we should always be vigilant towards our online endeavors. Imho.

[Bessta]

This is an informative article. I am really careful when it comes to money that is why I invested in cryptocurrency related things like ledger and I also bought a laptop where I only do cryptocurrency related stuff. Having a huge amount of money comes with a big responsibility as well so we have to be smart with our passwords or security.

[zulfi125]

As you know hackers are hacking wallets and stolen exchanges accounts also trying to hack exchanges main account so i recommend should safe data in google drive and also in hard form.

[jrrsparkles]

As you know hackers are hacking wallets and stolen exchanges accounts also trying to hack exchanges main account so i recommend should safe data in google drive and also in hard form.

Do you believe that data stored on google drive is safer?

I bet its not safe,even google can steal it and sell it to the companies so even don't store any of your private photos which might get leaked if someone doesn't like you.

Storing data in an offline drive can be cosndiered as safer but with encrytion which is most safe.

[billyhaleym]

As you know hackers are hacking wallets and stolen exchanges accounts also trying to hack exchanges main account so i recommend should safe data in google drive and also in hard form.

Do you believe that data stored on google drive is safer?

I bet its not safe,even google can steal it and sell it to the companies so even don't store any of your private photos which might get leaked if someone doesn't like you.

Storing data in an offline drive can be cosndiered as safer but with encrytion which is most safe.

Thank you I so much appreciate this,  what about users that store their data on telegram cloud,  is that safe as well? 

[Grishanya1234]

In any case, it’s already good that you noticed something similar, but in my opinion, the security of any account on a good resource should always be at the proper level and many of its resources provide it since, in my opinion, user security is paramount for any project.

[Ulven]

If we upload any data into internet then it becomes unsafe even if the sites claiming that they are completely secured.And even I know some of the ethical hackers who said that don't use internet for any kind of sensitive information to be stored or even to transmit.

Yes, more attention should be paid to privacy And do not deal with it randomly,Always look for trusted places that provide maximum privacy,Due to the large number of hackers in the web who are always trying to exploit the vulnerabilities to access user accounts and steal their purposes,That's why I advise everyone not to rush to make a decision that could be a cause of misappropriation.

[restuibu]

 very useful article and I hope for everyone to read this article so that they no longer have problems maintaining security and using Google 2fa authentication for account protection

[jrrsparkles]

As you know hackers are hacking wallets and stolen exchanges accounts also trying to hack exchanges main account so i recommend should safe data in google drive and also in hard form.

Do you believe that data stored on google drive is safer?

I bet its not safe,even google can steal it and sell it to the companies so even don't store any of your private photos which might get leaked if someone doesn't like you.

Storing data in an offline drive can be cosndiered as safer but with encrytion which is most safe.

Thank you I so much appreciate this,  what about users that store their data on telegram cloud,  is that safe as well? 

Anything that is uploaded on the internet is not safe,it might be stolen for different reasons so telegram cloud storage is also not safe so never store your crypto related passwords on it.