Who the hell is Troy Hunt ? you might ask

Troy Hunt is an Australian information security expert who has spent many hours studying data breaches to understand what happened and who was at risk.

For those of you who use Firefox Browser, you may already know of Troy Hunt. For those who don't Mozilla's blog has a link to his website :

https://haveibeenpwned.com/

enter an email address or username and it will automatically check if your email address or usernames have been the subject of a number of high profile data breaches. Many of the data breaches eventually reach the marketplace on the Darkweb and are sold off to the highest bidder. Often passwords are not highly encrypted so crackers can often gain access to an account fairly quickly after the data is sold and transferred.

My email address

Enter your email address and if it's one you've used for a long time, you may see a screen like this below ! This is the list in which my email address had apparently been kidnapped, multiple times.

Odds ?

Chances are you changed your password since these breaches occurred and it's not like you use the same password for linked-in as you do for your online bank account, (is it, please say no) ..so perhaps nothing major to worry about. However you may wish to review your security protocols following a visit to this site. It's what the FBI would do so you should too !!

• long live 2 factor authentication