An old data breach is still a data breach, and you’ll probably still need to pay attention to this when it comes to Facebook, a website that most people have used at some point. As you probably I’ve heard, a past data breach affecting half a billion Facebook users is circulating yet again after a hacker posted a large amount of personal information raised hacked accounts. And isalthough the actual hack took place two years ago, you can still take some preventive measures to ensure that this latest incident does not affect you A lot of.
To start, take the time to check and see if your data – including your email address, phone number, name and other identifying characteristics – appears in that breach. Try one of these options to search for different identifying information that may have been compromised:
If your phone number or other details are not in violation, great! You are good. If so, there’s not much you can do about it, now that information is out of home. On the positive side, yyou do not need to worry about your password having been stolen, but this data it could be used in phishing attempts elsewhere, and possibly even to reset your passwords or brute force input in your accounts, depending on how bad a service’s password recovery / reset mechanism is.
That said, since this data is fluctuating for some time, chances are good that you will probably they are not affected if you haven’t already I have been affected. If anything else, the the whole episode shows the importance of using fictitious information anywhere possible when signing up for an account – especially on social media. Obfuscation is entirely under your control. Not feel like you need to give up legitimate details about your life.
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For Facebook, which may include:
- Do not provide any optional information, if it is not necessary (your educational history, where you lived, your interests, your work history, etc.)
- Provide fictitious information when requested, such as a false date of birth or a pseudonym. (Follow this in the notes section of the your favorite password manager in case you are asked about your false information in order to regain access to your account or reset your password.)
- Using a fake email address (even slightly modified, such as [email protected] instead of [email protected]) and a phone number this is not your real phone number to sign up for an account. As before, save these credentials in your password manager to be sure.
- Use a different “real” name or a slightly modified version of your name. Do not use the same “screen name” or account name in all of your different services (something that we are all guilty of, no doubt).
Why does it matter? This makes it much more difficult for attackers to use the information collected in a data breach to affect you elsewhere. If you are always using different information, whenever possible, on the various services you use, it will be more difficult for an attacker to do social engineering to log into your account – they just won’t know enough about you in every service.
From now on, be sure to be on the lookout for any potential phishing scams. If you receive a text or email out of nowhere that tries to convince you of your legitimacy by providing you with some (now available) information about you, do not initiate an action on an exclusively based service in that message. Do not provide anyone with any other information in response. Do not click or tap links if you are not sure where they came from. Instead, pOpen your browser, visit the service directly and check for really something you need to take care of.