Want to Check if Your Number is Among the Leaked Facebook Data?

Here’s an easy way to do it

A few days ago, news regarding Facebook Data Breach has been hitting the headlines. According to the reports, 533 Million Facebook users across the world have been impacted.

Personal information such as email ID, full names, locations, birthdates, etc. has been put up for sale by the hackers.

According to the reports, over 32 million accounts in the United States, 11 million in the United Kingdom, and 6 million in India could have been compromised, among the breached accounts.

This private information can be used to sell it to other criminals, for the purpose of identity theft, for phishing attacks, to steal money from accounts, to steal unauthorized data from companies, or extortion and blackmailing.

Website to check if you are affected or not

There is a very popular website called ‘Have I been pwned’ that is gaining popularity in times where technology is the only way through which the world is able to keep moving forward. There are millions of users who are new to the world of technology and aren't aware of the settings and protection tricks to be used while using the internet.

I learned this in a special workshop conducted by Mr. Rakshit Tandon, who is an advisor of the Internet and Mobile Association of India, Chairman- National Outreach Program on Child Abuse with National Cyber Safety & Security Standards(NCSSS), Advisory- Cyber Crime Cells, Visiting Faculty— Police Academies, amongst many others.

He had conducted a workshop on the event of Women’s day in our school and had educated us about this website ‘HAVE I BEEN PWNED’.

How to use it?

Just follow the steps below and check if your account is amongst the 53 Million users that have been compromised or not.

1. Type ‘Have I been pwned’ in the Google search bar,
2. Visit the official https://haveibeenpwned.com link, you will get a screen as below

3. Enter the e-mail ID that has been linked to your Facebook account in the space provided (email or phone international format)

4. Once typed, press the pwned? button on the right.

If your data has been compromised, it will show in the list below. Whether it has been compromised or not, it is always advisable to change the Passwords of your primary emails on a regular basis.

Please pass on this information to your family, friends, or colleagues at your workplace. We all need to be alert by knowing these tricks to keep ourselves safe in the virtual world, where our enemy is mostly unknown.

Bhavna Narula, 2021. All rights are reserved by the author.

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Thank you for reading. :)