Regarding the "16 Billion Passwords just leaked"
I've seen several posts on tumblr, reddit, and other places floating around hyping up the 'big new data breach' that allegedly happened within the last few days and I wanted to take a moment to talk about it here for a second to help ease some confusion.
There was no new big leak that exposed 16 billion passwords.
I know this because I took some time to do some light research myself, and I happened to watch this video:
You can skip to 7:50 to get to what's important regarding these new articles floating around about this 'breach'.
To put it plainly:
These 'new data sets' that are floating around that these articles are reporting on, are (from what those examined them have said) a combination of many older data breach sets combined with newer ones, all smashed into one package.
That's why it's so big, and why there's '16 billion passwords' in 'one package.'
It's not that anything new and big has happened, it's just that someone took old data and put it with new data and said 'look this is all that's happened so far!'
You can even view Have I been Pwned to see what new data breaches have happened recently, or to see if your own email may have been part of one of such leaks.
Every breached website added to Have I Been Pwned appears here on the Who’s Been Pwned page. As of today, there are 891 breached sites liste
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Final thoughts: All in all, it's really nothing to worry about.
Just remember to have 2FA enabled and you should be fine. Change your passwords every few years, make sure to monitor your sign-in activity.
Oh, and never respond to any emails saying 'a new iphone 14 device has tried to log in to your account, was this you?' by clicking any buttons as these are usually phishing emails that will steal your login data. If you ever have issues, go to the website. :)
Stay safe!
-Bee
