Recent Data Breaches:
Wawa, Inc. - 30 million records (January 2020)
Microsoft - 250 million customer service records (January 2020)
Facebook - 260 million contact details exposed (December 2019)
Data breaches happen when bad hackers steal information from a company that may have your name, email address, usernames, passwords, phone number, address, and maybe other sensitive data. This data is sold or shared online, and hackers use it to phish you for other account logins or try to login to your email and other accounts tied to that breached email address. If your account may have been exposed, change your passwords immediately.
You can protect yourself by using unique and long passwords for ALL of your accounts, so use a different password for your email, bank login, social media accounts, etc. Using a password manager like LastPass, 1Password, or Dashlane can help keep you protected because it can help you remember long, unique passwords for each of your accounts. Plus it has the added protection of recognizing the actual website to login the correct username and password. For example, if you get a fake email that looks like it's from your bank Chase.com, but the fake website is chase-bank.com, the password manager will not recognize the fake website and will not enter in the username and password. You are saved!
Just choose any of the password managers, set it up on your computer, mobile phone, and tablets. You will be safer as long as your use different passwords for all your accounts, and you only have to remember one master password. For the master password, a longer password like a phrase with spaces and all will work well. For example, your master password could be "I love computers, and I need to watch my security!" This can be easy to remember but hard to crack.
