Effective tips to check if your online account is hacked

By GizBot Bureau

| Published: Monday, July 16, 2018, 18:01 [IST]

Personal data and information have never been received this much thought ever before. Ad companies want to buy them, some companies want to sell them and then there are all the other companies that wish to protect this data by making sure no one gets their hands on this data. Though the Facebook and Cambridge Analytical Scandal has dialed up the concern regarding the protection of personal data and information, there are a ton of other breaches and hacks that are quite serious and aren’t a result of companies willingly selling their data.

Effective tips to check if your online account is hacked

But these are a result of breaches and hacks. One of the worst things about this is that most users are never even made aware of this until years later. But you don’t have to be that worried either since there are plenty of tools available online that are capable of protecting your data. We can take a look at a few of them below:

Have I Been Pwned

This tool makes use of your email address to verify whether it has been associated with any hacked data. It cross-references your information with databases of breached credentials which were made public on sites like Pastebin.

You can also sign up for a notification service which will let you know if your account pops up in any new data breaches.

Facebook login history

Facebook gives you a list of locations and the devices with active sessions under a tab called "Where you're logged in." If you see an unrecognized location or device in this list, you can either report it or log out of the session by using the drop-down menu that is present next to each listing. If you notice that you have a large number of active sessions on devices that you rarely use, the best thing to do would be to log out of them in order to increase overall security.

BreachAlarm

This service is similar to Have I Been Pwned and can be signed up for and the only difference that can be observed is that the former offers a paid service for businesses. The service allows users to subscribe to notifications on data breaches that are associated with your email address and employee credentials.

Sucuri SiteCheck

The target of hackers are not just accounts but also websites, you can use check your website for malware by making use of Sucuri SiteCheck which searches a domain address for any known malware, its blacklisting status, website errors and also out-of-date software. This will also recognize whether you have a website firewall.

Twitter Account Access History and Permissions

Just like Facebook, Twitter also allows you to keep an eye on login locations and active sessions in order to determine whether a third party is accessing your account. You can access the Twitter Data menu within your Twitter settings to find a login history for your account.

Pwned Passwords

This service checks whether your passwords have been seen. You can learn whether your password is actually safe as the service has a database of passwords that have been exposed by breaches.

Google Accounts: Device Activity and Security Events

This security tool allows you to check activity and login locations for all apps and products that are related to Google. You can sign in to your Google profile and then select "device activity and security events" and look at any password changes or added recovery options that have occurred in the last 28 days.