How to Check If Your Email Was Exposed in a Data Breach

Data breaches happen when a company's customer database is hacked or leaked, sometimes exposing email addresses, passwords, and other personal details for millions of users at once. Because many companies you've used online over the years have had breaches at some point, it's worth checking whether any of your own accounts were part of one. So you know to change passwords that may be compromised.

Have I Been Pwned is a widely trusted, free website run by a security researcher that lets you type in your email address to see which known breaches, if any, included it. It doesn't show your actual password — only which breached services had your email address in their records — and it doesn't require creating an account or entering a password to use.

If you discover your email was part of a breach, the most important response is to change the password for that specific service, and to change it everywhere else too if you had reused that same password anywhere else, since reused passwords are one of the most common ways accounts get broken into. Source: haveibeenpwned.com and consumer.ftc.gov/articles/what-do-if-your-personal-information-exposed-data-breach.