If your personal data has been compromised, it is very likely that you will not find out until Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn or any other platform where you have given that personal information notifies you of a possible violation of your data. If that happens it will be too late, and it is very likely that by then your date of birth, place of residence, credit card number or other equally sensitive data have already been stolen.
Personal data at the mercy of hackers
Any personal information stolen by data thieves lurking on the Internet can allow hackers to do anything with it, from making purchases and opening credit accounts in your name, to requesting refunds for the products you have purchased. .
What’s worse, billions of these hacked login credentials are available on the dark internet , neatly packaged for hackers to easily download for free or by making small payments in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin.
You cannot prevent web pages from being hacked, but you can take some steps to verify if your information may be compromised and limit the damage caused by a hack. By using a password manager that creates unique passwords, you can ensure that if a site is cyber-hacked, its stolen password will not give hackers access to your accounts on other sites.
Take all possible precautions against data theft
A good password manager can also help you manage all your login information, making it easy to create and use unique and unhackable passwords. After a cyberattack, a couple of monitoring tools can alert you to which of your stolen login credentials are on the dark internet, allowing you to start limiting the damage thieves can do to you. One of them, which is also free, is Google password verification.
How to use Google password verification
As part of your password management service , Google offers you the password verification tool, which monitors the usernames and passwords you use to log into sites outside of Google’s domain and notifies you if those login credentials have been exposed.
If you use Google’s password service to keep track of your Chrome or Android login credentials, go to the Google password manager site and click Go Verify Passwords. Then enter Verify passwords and log in so that the system confirms that it is you and not an imposter. Then enter the password for your Google account. After a while, Google will display any problems it finds, including compromised, stolen, and weak passwords.
Next to each repeated password (that is, that you have used the same one in several places) or weak is the Change password button, which you can access to choose a more secure one.
