Introduction

Think your email is safe? You might be surprised. Your information sticks around longer than you think. Even if you believe you’ve never been hacked directly or never received a notification from a company about your data being leaked, your email address, passwords, or other personal information could already be circulating on the dark web.

We’ve all signed up for dozens of websites over the years like shopping apps, old forums, that random site you used once for a discount code. Any of those could be the weak link.

How to Check if Your Email’s Been Pwned

So what does “pwned” even mean? In hacker-speak, it basically means “owned.”

Checking if your email has been exposed in a breach is simple and free:

1. Head to HaveIBeenPwned.com
2. Type in your email address and hit “pwned?”
3. Wait a second… and there it is. Either:
   • Good news: “No pwnage found!” Your email hasn’t been discovered in any public data breaches.
   • Uh-oh: “Oh no! pwned!” Your email was found in one (or more) breaches.

The site will show you:

• How many breaches your email was found in
• Which companies were involved
• What data was exposed
• When the breach occurred

What It Actually Means if Your Data Shows Up

If your email is found in a breach, it means that at some point, a company or service you used suffered a data breach and your data was part of the stolen information.

This doesn’t necessarily mean you’ve been hacked personally, but it does mean:

• Your info was publicly leaked or sold on the dark web
• Attackers may use that data to try to log into your accounts elsewhere
• If you reused the same password, you could be at serious risk

Steps You Can Take to Protect Yourself

If your email has been pwned, don’t panic. But do act quickly and smartly. Here’s what you should do:

• Change your password-Especially for any account listed in the breach. And if you reused that password on other sites? Change those too.
• Use strong, unique passwords everywhere-No repeats. No “Password123.”
• Turn on Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)-Everywhere it’s available. This adds a second layer of security even if your password gets stolen.
• Clean up old accounts-Delete or deactivate accounts you no longer use. The fewer accounts you have, the smaller your attack surface.
• Stay alert for phishing-If your email is floating around out there, you might get scammy emails pretending to be legit companies.

Final Thought

Your data is valuable not only to you, but unfortunately, to cybercriminals too. A quick visit to Have I Been Pwned might not seem like much, but it’s a powerful first step in taking back control of your digital footprint. Go ahead, check your email. Then take action.