Have you ever wondered how much of your personal information is available online?

Here’s your chance to find out.

we’ve used Hunt’s, have-i-been-pwned, database to help you:

Find out what data breaches you’ve been caught up in
See a visual summary of the potential scale of the leaked information out there about you
Understand how something known as “the mosaic effect” can increase the risks we all face online

abc.net.au/news/2023-05-18/dat

tell ya what seeing it all laid out in that way from ABC & HaveIBeenPwned is quite an eye opener

The first breach you showed up in was at ▆ back in 2012.

i mean, the email in question i knew had been in a few breaches but still seeing all the results displayed in this manner

Between them, 22 distinct pieces of your identity have been potentially exposed, many of them multiple times over.

Follow

it's called the “mosaic effect”, and it means that your risk compounds with every breach. This is because all of that information can be tied back together using one piece of information that links it all together — in this case, your email address.

and your info can end up online by others using services

Troy Hunt has been caught up in 28 breaches himself, and he’d never even heard of several companies that exposed his personal information until they were breached.

One of these situations has stuck in his mind.

“I once caught up with someone in an infosec (information-security) capacity and they added me to their address book,” he recalls.

This person used Covve, a contacts app that stores data in the cloud — though Troy had no idea about this yet. When Covve’s server was later breached, Troy’s name, phone number and email address all ended up in the data.

Many of us won’t recognise some of those entities that have exposed our data — it’s an indication of how little we know about what happens to our data once we give it away.

@ecksmc

Thanks for this.

btw.

All three of my main accounts

"Congratulations, your email has no known breaches.

If you’d like to try another email, you can JUMP BACK UP . Otherwise you can continue with the generic version of this story."

@corlin yeah i tried three of mine two were no known breaches

only one had breaches which i knew about but still eye-opening to see it laid out like this

@ecksmc
The mosaics look scary, but more scary is that those data breaches didn't reveal confidential information -- they just revealed for free information those companies had gathered about you and were already selling to anyone willing to pay.

@AlphaCentauri didn't reveal confidential info ?/

passwords - phone number- address book(meaning everyone i know who i have a saved phone number/email/address for are also in the breach info) - DOB - IP - physical location - IMEI number etc..etc are/should be confidential and were/could be revealed in some breaches

yeah some companies will sell some of your data by using trackers mainly but the stuff sold from these breaches are more personal which companies/services should be protecting

@ecksmc
What I mean is all their data about you was already for sale. That's their entire business. You never gave anything to them in the first place. They were able to gather it on their own. Their clients are marketers, political campaigns, private detectives, anyone who wants it. For sale on the dark web vs for sale from PDL, not much difference.

@AlphaCentauri the data from data breaches is not the same as data gathered from you

there is a difference in the data

the data from breaches contains information you give them information that others can't gather in the way you are talking about < until it is sold on the darkweb from breaches

i don't why you're thinking all the data was already for sale cause that is not true

Sign in to participate in the conversation

CounterSocial is the first Social Network Platform to take a zero-tolerance stance to hostile nations, bot accounts and trolls who are weaponizing OUR social media platforms and freedoms to engage in influence operations against us. And we're here to counter it.