It’s just one of those things that’s become a part of life now for most people. When one of the first major data breaches occurs in your life, there’s a pretty good chance that you are in shock and struggle to find words for it.
But with so many different breaches over the years from a variety of sources, it just feels like a normal part of life now. That’s not to say that you shouldn’t be vigilant, but it’s just something that most people have gotten used to by now.
Another one
With that said, there’s a report from Wired that 149 million usernames and passwords were exposed from an unknown database. Jeremiah Fowler, a security analyst, discovered the massive database housing information from the largest platforms and services out there, like Gmail, Facebook, streaming services, trading accounts, and more.
To give you an idea of just how large this database is, in total, with all the accounts combined, it comes out to be around 96GB of raw data. The worst part about all of this is that the database was freely accessible without any protection or guards in place. Perhaps even more alarming is that the database also contained credentials for government websites.
While you’d think something like this would be taken down immediately, it apparently took Fowler a month to get it down, and it wasn’t easy with multiple requests being made to the host. At this point, it’s unknown who or what entity was hosting this database. And Fowler states that this wasn’t a stagnant cache, but was, in fact, getting larger as time passed.
Should I be worried?
The answer is always yes in this type of scenario. You can’t really do much in this situation, but it’s always a good idea to stay aware of your account and have all protections available enabled. For most people, that means having two-factor authentication on, along with any other additional hurdles that will prevent an account from being accessed.
It’s also important to check up on any older accounts you might have long forgotten about. While they are probably useless at this point, they could still host some valuable information you don’t want seen or stolen. Of course, there are password managers, which can do a lot to mitigate these types of issues. If you’re interested, we have a few we can recommend.
However, this goes beyond just digital accounts, because once all the data points get put together, there’s a pretty good chance that other parts of your life can also get exposed. Again, it’s hard to say what, if anything, will happen, but just be prepared for the worst and stay on your toes.
