What is a Data Breach?
A data breach is a high-risk security incident, where sensitive data is compromised by an unauthorized individual. The hacker could exploit this data by accessing, copying, transmitting, viewing, or stealing it.
Data breaches commonly involve the exposure of valuable sensitive information, including:
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Financial information, like credit card numbers and bank account details
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Personally identifiable information (PII), including personal info like full names, addresses, phone numbers, and social security numbers
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Trade secrets
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Intellectual property
Cybercriminals can also discover and exploit existing data leaks and cloud leaks to cause data breaches.
Chrome’s Password Checkup checks our username and password against over 4 billion credentials that Google has recognized as unsafe. Google identifies Gmail accounts affected by third-party data breaches and accounts where users are re-using their Gmail passwords, to prevent further compromise.
We’ll need to access Password Checkup to check if our login credentials are unsafe and take further action.
How to Use Password Checkup?
We can access Password Checkup directly here.
Once we’re in Password Checkup:
Click the ‘Check Passwords’ button on the Password Checkup page.
Google recommends us to update our passwords if:
- The password has been exposed in a data breach
- The password is considered weak
- The password is used across multiple accounts
Gaining awareness of common tactics used to compromise is the first line of defense against accidentally exposing your personal information.