Millions of Gmail addresses and passwords were posted online Tuesday but the leak may not be as serious as originally thought, according to multiple published reports.
The private information of 5 million Gmail users was posted on a Russian Bitcoin forum, according to a report from the New York Daily News.
The private information of 5 million Gmail users was posted on a Russian Bitcoin forum, according to a report from the New York Daily News.
But according to a blog post from Google, “Less than 2 percent of the username and password combinations might have worked, and our automated anti-hijacking systems would have blocked many of those login attempts.”
The passwords posted appear to either be very old or were used to log in to accounts separate from Google, a security expert told Mashable.
The full list of usernames and passwords appeared to have been taken down from the website by Wednesday, the Daily News reported.
Gmail users can check here to see if their accounts were hacked.
https://isleaked.com/en
Enter your Gmail email address in the field near the top of the screen and you will be notified immediately if your account was exposed in this latest breach. And just to prove to affected users that this is a legitimate issue, the site will display the first two characters of your password if your credentials were leaked.
So, what should you do if your account is now exposed?
Immediately visit the following link:
Clicking on the Security tab on this page will allow you to change your password, and you should do so immediately.
Now, whether or not your login was leaked in this most recent hack, you should take this opportunity to enable 2-step authentication on your Google account.
On the same page linked above, the Security tab shows a “2-Step Verification” listing. Click the settings link next to it and you’ll be walked through the setup process. For those who are unaware, 2-step authentication will text a unique temporary security code to a phone number you provide during the setup. Then, that code must be entered each time you log into your Google account from a new device or with a new service.
