Definition:

pwn

/pōn/

verb

INFORMAL

past tense: pwned; past participle: pwned

1. (especially in video gaming) utterly defeat (an opponent or rival); completely get the better of.

   "I can't wait to pwn some noobs in this game"

If you're ever wondering if an email address you use has been compromised, see the following website:

https://haveibeenpwned.com/

Enter your email address and you can find out if it has ever been compromised. If it has, it would be a good idea to immediately change your password to ensure that further problems don't occur.

You can also subscribe to their service where you'll receive an email like the following if your account has been compromised:

You've been pwned!

You signed up for notifications when your account was pwned in a data breach and unfortunately, it's happened. Here's what's known about the breach:

Email found:	XXXX@XXXX.XXX
Breach:	ShareThis
Date of breach:	9 Jul 2018
Number of accounts:	40,960,499
Compromised data:	Dates of birth, Email addresses, Names, Passwords
Description:	In July 2018, the social bookmarking and sharing service ShareThis suffered a data breach. The incident exposed 41 million unique email addresses alongside names and in some cases, dates of birth and password hashes. In 2019, the data appeared listed for sale on a dark web marketplace (along with several other large breaches) and subsequently began circulating more broadly.

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2 Steps to Better Password Security

Monitoring Have I Been Pwned for data breaches is a great start, now try these next 2 steps to protect all your accounts:

Step 1: Protect yourself with strong, unique passwords for each website with the 1Password password manager

Step 2: Enable 2 factor authentication and store the codes inside your 1Password account

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You can also run a search for breaches of your email address again at any time to get a complete list of sites where your account has been compromised.

Check my email address again

Why are you only hearing about this now? Whilst the breach occurred in July 2018, sometimes there can be a lengthy lead time of months or even years before the data is disclosed publicly. Have I Been Pwned will always attempt to alert you ASAP, it's just a question of how readily available the data is.

Please note that it is not possible to retrieve the passwords themselves from HIBP. If you don't want to receive any future breach notifications, just click here to unsubscribe.

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Donate to Have I Been Pwned

If you loved this free service and want to know what goes into making it possible, have a read of the donations page. Buy me a coffee or a beer or just some time with the kids at a movie.