Have I Been Pwned?

Finding out if you’ve been compromised!

 

This is the first in a series of blog posts on ideas for how you can help look after yourself when it comes to information security.

Have you come across the website www.haveibeenpwned.com?

It’s a website that allows you to check if an account has been compromised in a data breach. It cannot of course tell you 100% that it knows about all possible compromised accounts, but it’s a very good starting point!

It’s a free and quick tool that also allows you to sign up for the ‘Notify me’ service which will tell you if your account comes up as compromised in the future. The data comes from aggregated breaches that have been publicly released.

The UCL Information Security Group has signed up for the ‘Notify me’ service and receives reports for UCL accounts on a regular basis.

If one or more of your accounts does show up, try not to panic. Bear in mind the date of the breach, have you changed your password since then? If not, changing your password would be a good idea. Using a password manager with 2-factor authentication is also a good idea – more on that in the next blog post.

So, give it a go, have you been pwned?