Email address is a vital online identity. Its presence in a data breach can be the gateway to identity theft, fraud and ransomware attacks.
Criminals can use the leaked account and password combinations to try to sign in to other sites, shops, and online services, a process called “credential stuffing.” These are some of the simple measures that you can do to alleviate the risk.
Confirm the Data Breach and Its Source
It’s a scary feeling when you find out your email address was included in a data breach. In case attackers are able to guess your email/password combination, they may access your accounts and perpetrate fraud. It may also enable them to create a complete identity portrait of you such as date of birth, driver license number, and so on.
Before taking any action, it is good to be aware of precisely what data was exposed in the breach. This information can be vague and should be presented by the company in their notification. A good method of verifying the breach and its origin is by using breach lookup tools such as HIBP.
Regular checks of breaches will make you aware of new breaches and avoid falling into wrong hands with your information. But these tools have limitations which should be known to you before you make use of them. These machines are based on publicly available records of information leaks.
This implies that when such breach is not reported or registered in this set of databases, such breach will not be detected by these tools. This may expose you to other attacks as in case of credential stuffing where stolen passwords are cross-tested with other accounts.
Immediately Change your Email Password
Once attackers obtain an email account they are able to perform all the actions such as identity theft and fraud or even make wire transfer payments or ransomware attacks. And since a lot of our personal information is saved in email accounts, the repercussions can be wide-ranged.
Most online shops, services and accounts require a user ID in the form of an email address, and thus, in case your email is reported compromised with a weak password or even a password that is shared by the same user on more than one site, hackers can easily log in and cause havoc.
They can also forcefully access other accounts using the same email/ password combination and steal your information and loot your online life.
One of the most used tricks is to make the email urgent and ask the recipients to either take action by clicking on the links or submitting sensitive details, normally by telling them that their account has been compromised.
And be not deceived, this is a deception to get you to do something without thinking critically about the message and what it is about.
Enable Two-Factor Authentication
By having your email address, a cybercriminal can use it to reset passwords on other accounts, such as those at a bank and credit card, and intercept and deliver sensitive data such as medical records and financial statements. It also can be used by them to propagate phishing scams or malicious malware.
Two-factor authentication (or 2FA) will allow hackers to have no access to your account even in the event that they get your password. 2FA provides an extra level of security by asking you to enter a verification code after accessing your account, and sending it to your phone or an authenticator app.
In order to enable 2FA on your Auth0 account, log in to the management dashboard and under Multifactor Authentication settings, see the on/off toggle.
In this case, you have the ability to create your custom providers and rules to implement 2FA depending on such aspects as geographical location, time of the day, type of network or specific domains or any other criteria you can imagine.
You can further use Auth0 Guardian to automatically look up the Have I Been Pwned (HIBP) database with your email addresses and remind users to enable 2FA when an account is found in a data breach.
Investigate Suspicious Account
Once a breach occurs, it might seem like the direct attack on your cyber security. It is a crisis, which should not only be solved by technical reworking of passwords, cancelling tokens of the session and searching malware but also a response of a person to it should be emotional and professional.
Cyber-Attack Trauma is a valid and highly acute stressor (Psychologists have now identified it). When you are breached it makes you feel like you are not there; it is like someone is sitting at your inbox reading your personal mail to your husband or wife and viewing your bank accounts.
If you are having problems accessing your email, emails are listed as read when you did not send them and your account settings are changed are all indications of breach. Visit Have I Been Pwned to find out whether your email address has been included in a data breach and use it as a chance to refresh your email recovery and security options.
Delete any accounts that are not used and think about signing into websites, stores and other Internet services with a different email address (such as a business-specific email address).
It can help to consider the idea of creating account alerts on banks and financial accounts, such that you are notified via a text, phone call or push notification of suspicious activity.
Change passwords of Linked Accounts
While changing your password is a good start, it’s also important to update any other accounts that are linked to your email address. This is particularly important if you use the same password for multiple accounts.
The combination of the email address and password that criminals might have may enable them to log in to those other accounts as you do.
Graham Cluley, a security consultant at Sophos, cautions LinkedIn members especially to be particularly cautious. He writes that the attackers are probably doing this by sending phishing emails to the members of LinkedIn saying that their account is compromised.
Such emails normally contain an urgent call to action that cannot be disregarded and it needs to be taken as an urgent action like clicking a hyperlink to verify your account.
Be sure to watch out for requests to add family members or friends to your account that aren’t approved by you. This sends up a red flag that there has been a breach and there is a possibility that another person is using your account.
Be aware of fraudulent emails and tricks
Many websites, stores and services use email address as user ID, so in case of data breach, they give a lot of opportunities to criminals due to the availability of your email address.
They may rely on your email to send you a bogus email requesting your passwords and account details or they may even steal the password itself (either by brute force or through re-use on other accounts).
They can also use phishing scams to attack you via email, text messages and counterfeit e-commerce websites. These malicious direct messages are meant to steal your personal information, or infect your devices. This data can be then utilized in identity theft or be sold in the dark web.
Be aware of typical phishing indicators, like a feeling of urgency or fear (e.g., “Your account has been compromised, confirm your account details now) or bad grammar and spelling.
It is also important to beware of those emails which fail to address you by your first name or do not address you as dear valued customer. Most real-life companies use personalized communications and use names to greet their customers.
Check Email Recovery and Security Settings
In emergency medicine, the golden hour (the so-called Golden Hour) is a time, within which the most disastrous consequences can be averted by quick action. The same rule is applied in a data break: When you do not hurry up, you might lose the access to all your digital personality.
The digital landscape today is no longer the place of individuals who hack the basement server alone; it is an industrial-level business, with the password reuse as its raw material.
It implies that it is now possible to measure the gap between a minor data breach at a small online store in the business of selling books, magazines, and similar items in a matter of seconds, rather than days.
The best remedy to this trap is to have a so-called ghost email which is only recovered upon the need to do so and is secured by hardware key redundancy.
Most working populations resort to personal Gmail accounts as a staging ground on work related documents that they find too complex to manage in the corporate setup; hackers are aware of this and are keenly tracking of such personal accounts because of that purpose.
In case you are not able to access your ghost email, you can also file a report at the Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) of the FBI in order to freeze stolen funds.
Monitor Your Accounts for Future Breaches
Data breaches are cyber wildfires, destroying businesses and leaving our data vulnerable. However, the good news is that, despite the email address you have popped in a breach, there is more control than you believe.
Actually, the most important thing in whether you are going to get hacked is the speed with which you respond. Here’s your playbook:
Begin with confirming the breach and determining what was compromised. Then, take immediate action. And lastly, continue to be alert of the indications that a hacker has accessed your account.
As an illustration, in case the data breach involved your date of birth or a driver license number, criminals can make counterfeit IDs with these and engage in identity fraud.
And in case your passwords were revealed during the attack, attackers can attempt to guess or brutally force their passwords, enabling them to log into all of your accounts using that combination.
Register with RelyShield to keep track of your email passwords and other forms of sensitive data that may expose you to vulnerability. RelyShield will compare your data with billions of leaked records, and notify you when your email address is found in any new leaks.
