Give me 12 seconds. And I’ll tell you if your email address has ever been stolen

Every day, somewhere in the world, a website or database gets hacked and lots of people’s email addresses are stolen.

Most of the time you don’t hear about this, as the numbers are small, and the hacks don’t hit the headlines. But a couple of times a year, there’s a massive hack – think millions of email addresses stolen.

This is often when ordinary people like you and me are affected.

Because we sign up for things online all the time, happily handing over our email address. Nothing wrong with that. It’s a crucial part of the online experience.

So maybe you can’t see what the big problem is when your email address gets stolen?

The problem is that cyber criminals these days are smart and well resourced. And they have lots of clever things they can do with your email address.

For example, they might cross reference it with other times your email address has been compromised. And start to build up a picture of you. So they can find you on social media, where you live, where you work, etc.

They might eventually find a password that you’ve used on a site somewhere.

And they know that far too many people use the same password on multiple sites. Or if not the same one, then variations of that password.

To a hacker, Fluffy135 is the same as Fluffy134.

They have automated tools that can crack simple passwords in just minutes or hours. Even a small part of a password can be enough to send them in the right direction.

Their ultimate goal is to get into your email account itself

Because once they’re inside your email, they can take control of a shocking number of systems and apps. Think what happens any time you forget a password. You reset it… by sending a reset email to yourself.

A hacker who gets into your email can intercept these reset emails. Giving them the potential to get into anything 😱

Cyber criminals play a long game these days. They gain access to your email. Then they set up ways for them to secretly monitor what’s going on.

Sometimes this can be a hidden forwarder, sending copies of your messages to a Gmail account. Or they can copy messages to a folder you didn’t know you had, where they can read them.

Seems crazy to think hackers want to read your emails when you can barely keep up with them yourself!

It’s believed that the average amount of time a cyber criminal sits in your email before attacking is 197 days.

That’s enough time to build up a profile of you. See what your patterns are. Who you trust. When your usual routines are disrupted, such as a holiday. And it’s typically then when they strike. There are dozens of clever ways they have to pull off con tricks on your staff, and divert funds from your business bank account.

Look – there are plenty of ways to protect yourself and your business. Such as using:

• Randomly generated passwords
• A password manager to make random passwords zero stress
• And multi factor authentication, such as generating a code on your phone to prove it’s you logging in

But before you even get there, the most basic precaution you can take is to check to see if your email address has been stolen in the first place.'Have I Been Pwned' is a website that allows internet users to check whether their personal data has been compromised by a data breach. Simply enter your email address, and in just a few seconds it will check if at has been compromised in any way – and tell you, instantly.

Knowing you have a problem is the first part of tackling it, right? And, if you find any of your email accounts have been compromised and would like advice on how you and your business can stay safe online in the future, be sure to contact us to arrange a cyber security audit for your business.

Click on the link below to check your email address:

https://haveibeenpwned.com/