Your Password Probably Needs to Be Changed

The email addresses and passwords of 771 million people have been published online during a gigantic data leak.

Personal data collected by a “spambot” called Onliner has been dumped on a server thought to be located in the Netherlands.This bot is designed to spread malware that steals banking details and infects people’s computers to pump out more viruses as well as vast amounts of spam.

Troy Hunt, who owns the website HaveIBeenPwned, said the leak was “the largest single set of data I’ve ever loaded into HIBP”. His website offers an easy way of finding out if your details have been published in a data breach.

“Just for a sense of scale, that’s almost one address for every single man, woman and child in all of Europe,” he said. Mr Hunt said the incident is so severe that even he was caught up in it. He added: “The first place to start is with an uncomfortable truth: my email address is in there. Twice.”

Anyone whose email address is on the list is likely to be hit by a barrage of spam. If your email address is on the list, your account could be taken over and turned into a spam factory or used to distribute dangerous malware.

To see if your email and password could be compromised click here.