Topmail Blog

Security Features, Announcements and Updates

— 3 min read

Has Your Email Account Been Hacked?

Over a billion accounts have been hacked in the last 5 years.

There have been many reported hacks and data breaches of popular online websites over the past few years. Most recently Yahoo Mail was reported to have had over 1 billion accounts which had been compromised by hackers. Below are a list of 6 large breaches which have occurred in recent years and the reported number of accounts affected:

  • Yahoo Accounts over 1,000,000,000
  • Myspace Accounts 359,420,698
  • LinkedIn Accounts 164,611,595
  • Adobe Accounts 152,445,165
  • Dropbox Accounts 68,648,009
  • Tumblr Accounts 65,469,298

*(Source: https://haveibeenpwned.com/)

Have you ever checked if your account has been breached?

There are quite a number of account holders to date who have not checked whether their account has actually been hacked. This could be down to two main reasons:

They have no idea how to check if their account had been breached.

They don’t care i.e. they believe there is nothing within their personal account(s) that would be of value to anyone.

What people seem to forget is that when an email account is breached it gives the hacker the ability to access your password, which in some cases you use for a lot of other online accounts, of which these could have valued private information stored.

It is very important that each time you hear about a reported breach of an online service you may use, that you take proactive steps to protect your account(s). Log into your accounts and change your passwords, specifically in respect to any accounts which hold private or financial information.

How do I check if my account has been hacked?

The good news is that checking if your account has been hacked is quite simple. Data breaches can expose a wealth of sensitive information. Hackers have accessed billions of usernames, email addresses, passwords and even credit card numbers. Your information could be right there in the hackers’ hands, so it is important to check your accounts today!

  • Step 1: Go to https://haveibeenpwned.com/ Have I Been Pwned is an easy-to-use site with a database of information that hackers and malicious programs have released publicly. It monitors hacker sites and collects new data every five to 10 minutes about the latest hacks and exposures.
  • Step 2: Enter your email address
  • Step 3: Check which sites have been breached that are associated with your email address

Finally, at this point, you will be able to see which accounts have been affected. You should immediately log into these accounts and get changing your passwords.

Want to secure your privacy?

Free email accounts such as a Gmail or Yahoo are one of the most lucrative services for hackers to try breach. These free accounts do not provide the level of protection and privacy needed to fully secure your personal information. If you are one of the unlucky users who has been hacked within your free email account and are not confident of your privacy going forward, then you should consider an account with Topmail.

Our accounts are 100% secure and private and we never scan, or allow the scanning, of your personal information by any third parties. You can sign up today for a Free Trial and start securing your privacy straight away.