Unfortunately, data breaches are a part of our high-tech world. Today, we learned of a new one. Touted by many technology outlets as the “Mother of All Breaches,” the “Collection #1” breach announced today exposed 2.6 billion email addresses and passwords for an unknown list of websites. As the name implies, this could be one of several groups of compromised data. Some reports note there are potentially six batches of data that have been hacked, and that “Collection #1” is over 2-years-old.
You can find out if your email addresses were involved in this breach as well as others at the following link: https://haveibeenpwned.com/.
You can find out if your passwords were involved in this breach and others by clicking here: https://haveibeenpwned.com/Passwords.
You can learn more about this breach by clicking here, here or here.
We strongly recommend you take this opportunity to update all of your passwords, both personal and business, as soon as possible.
Even if this information has been available for some time, the recent publicity of this breach will surely increase dubious interest in the data.
When you’re deep into the settings of each profile, find out if there’s an opportunity to add two-step authentication to your account, particularly on your financial accounts. Two-step authentication will not only require a password, but it will also send a text or call to your phone to provide a code for verification.
If you’re part of our client family and are wondering how to do this for the accounts we manage for you, here are some tips:
- The custodian we use – Fidelity – offers this and other security services that are relatively simple to sign up for.
- Click here to login to your Fidelity account.
- Click on Profile on the top bar and scroll down to ‘Security’ on the bottom left.
- Click on ‘Security Center.’ There, you can change your password, register for two-step authentication and review the other security options available to your account.
If you go through this process and still find you have worries or questions about your accounts with us, please don’t hesitate to reach out.
