Hi Guys,
See below an email that I sent to one of our community today. The person asked us what they should do if they are involved in a data breach. Perhaps this advice will help you as well.
Hi Jessica,
Thanks for getting in touch. We understand how stressful data breaches can be, and it is great to hear how proactive you are being. These are a few of the steps you would need to take to secure your accounts again;
- Go to the account for each of these sites and change the password for each account. That would mean going to facebook.com, logging into your account, and changing the password.
- We would also suggest that you set up any other security options for that account, like 2-factor authentication.
- We would also recommend that you change the password for those accounts if you used that password for any other account. So if you used the same password for the Facebook account involved in the data breach for your Netflix account, you should change the password on the Netflix account.
- Ensure you use unique passwords for all accounts so that no two passwords are the same; this will limit your risk if any account is involved in a data breach in the future. (You can check out password management applications to help manage your security and all your unique passwords)
- Close any accounts that you no longer use. It is surprising how many website accounts we collect, each storing some if not, a lot of information on us. Close any you don’t use and limit your risk. Some sources can help list all of your online accounts; check out www.deseat.me
However, if you check that email address again after you have followed the steps above, you will still see the listing for those data breaches, as the account relating to that email address was, at one point, involved in a data breach.
We hope that answers your question, but if there is anything else we can help you with, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.
Kind regards,
Max Roberts,
Privacy Care Team.