Was Your Email in a Data Breach? How to Check and What to Do

Big companies get breached regularly, and lists of email addresses and passwords end up on the internet. You can check whether yours is among them.

How to check

• Have I Been Pwned (haveibeenpwned.com), run by security researcher Troy Hunt, lets you search your email address against hundreds of known breaches for free.
• Your browser’s password manager (Chrome, Edge, Firefox) and many password-manager apps warn when a saved password appears in a breach — open the “Password checkup” or “Security” section.
• Google account users can run the Security Checkup at myaccount.google.com.

Reading the result

Each breach lists what was exposed: email only, or passwords, phone numbers, addresses, dates of birth. Old breaches still matter if you reused the same password elsewhere.

What to do

1. Change the password on that site and on every site where you used the same or a similar one.
2. Turn on two-factor authentication for email, banking and shopping accounts — see passwords, passkeys and 2FA.
3. Expect targeted phishing: scammers use breached details to sound genuine. Re-read how to spot phishing emails.
4. Watch your accounts: enable SMS/email alerts for every bank and card transaction.