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Most people have more than two or more email accounts and they probably use both for different purposes. One email which is related to personal stuffs such as for banking, work, education etc. and other email for signing up on random websites which doesn't let you do anything without making a account. You use such websites for once and doesn't look back at it after signing up with your second email. As time passes, you sign up on a lot of websites and your email keeps filling with promotional messages from such websites.
Thats the purpose of having a second email account which separate such promotional emails to land in your work email ID. Although thats not the case for everyone and many people just have one email account and everything in their inbox looks messed up.
Well the point is, you sign up on so many websites which can be hacked by hackers and your email details such as name, location and even passwords may be there on sell somewhere on dark web. With all that detail if a person get access to your email, it can be dangerous.
Although most reputed websites and service providers (websites) will tell you about the breach of any kind of information and suggest you to change password immediately. Not all websites do that thing of disclosing such breaches even to customers which is bad.
As I said earlier, you sign up on a lot websites and forgets about them. So its recommended to always change your email password on regular intervals. One more thing you can do is to look if your email is included in any hacking breach.
"Have I been pwned?" is a website which keeps the database of the breaches and can tell you about if your account is exposed in any breach. It also tells you the service or website name on which you used your email.
It is pretty simple to use, all you have to do is type your email address. The website will then look into the database for your email if it is compromised in any data breach. Then the website will list the websites which has been compromised and your email was there in the brached data. (See screenshot below)
The website can also list what type of data was exposed in the hack such as Username, Passwords, Names, Date of birth, Location, Gender, Age and other kind of personally identifiable data.
Measures to take to prevent your online identity -
- Use disposable emails to sign up on random websites which you use only once or twice.
- Do not enter personally identifiable information on random websites. You can use a different name and other fake data on such websites.
- Keep changing email passwords on regular basis. This is the most easy thing you can do to protect your account.
- Use strong passwords with special characters and numbers. If you have problem remembering such difficult passwords, you can use password managers such as Bitwarden, Lastpass etc.
- Do not download random apps on your smartphones from Google Play Store and App Store. Read the reviews before downloading.
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