DataBreach-How To Know If You Are Involved

Data breaches happen a lot and the latest with Uber would concern many of us.

Last Friday, news emerged that Uber, the ride-sharing app used by had suffered a data breach.

So what happens when you get caught up in a security breach?

What are the consequences?

What do you need to do?

Firstly - What is a data breach?

A data breach is when personal information is shared or accessed by persons unknown. This can be by done accidently or because of a security breach.

Say for example your real estate has a copy of your rental agreement and they accidentally forward it on to a different tenant instead of you, that’s a breach. So is a hacker stealing documents from a company’s server. Both range in severity, but both are classed as a data breach as there was a security lack.  In general, data breaches happen due to weaknesses in technology and user behaviour.

What happens if you’re affected by a data breach?

If a security breach involves your contact information such as your home address, email or phone number, you should change the password you use for that service. If you use that password for multiple accounts/services, change those too. Next, enable multi-factor authentication if possible. When changing your password, remember the rules of password setting, which are that your passwords should be simultaneously impossible for anyone else to guess and also impossible for you to forget. That latter rule is less important in the age of password managers, which will keep track of long and complex passwords for you.

To check if you have been involved in a data breach head here Have I Been Pwned

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