And They Could Be Sitting in a Basement in Hamilton, Ontario
We are all guilty of it- I hadn’t logged in to one of my emails in a while so decided it was time to clear out some cobwebs. Sitting blissfully in my favorite pajamas in front of my laptop, I wasn’t expecting my slight surprise (nothing shocks me anymore) that Google revealed there was a data leak and that my email may have been compromised.
I sighed, “great....” so after resetting my password (with all the extra toppings this time) I went further to find out the whys and how's.
I also added a recovery phone number at the same time (recommended).
I began clicking through the site. It’s a bit more straight forward than you may think, but unless you’re looking for it, you may not spot the issue.
The steps to take are below,
I saw that my old Galaxy A13, sitting abandoned in some dresser drawer in my bedroom hadn’t been used in almost a year-it continued to show me the other accounts it was last active on; my work computer at the office was logged into, presently active on my new iPhone 15 Plus and MacBook Pro and then somewhere I hadn’t been before- Hamilton.
I was sitting at home in Gatineau.
I obviously logged out of Hamilton, you can’t delete the device completely, but your account would be secured once the password is changed and google gives you that option first.
I suspect that the leak came from one of the third-party apps I had used my email for; probably Reddit (one of the most toxic platforms in my opinion). I deleted the app’s access from my account. There has been rumor that Reddit had a massive password leak that went unnoticed for many people, also important to note that Reddit’s security measures are pretty much garbage. Mostly because some giant corporations usually focus solely on profit; they don’t care about you.
Third parties are responsible for 29% of breaches; too many hands in the pile with your information. Third-parties continue to be an on-going security concern.
If you want to manage the list of third-parties you have connected to your account,
Our emails have the potential of being quite the lifeline especially now since Google offers you the option to just, “use with Google account,” everything can be tied together, and that’s a lot of everything; subscriptions, payment options, e-transfers, private info all exist within your Google account.
I know it’s a pain in the crack but changing your passwords regularly as well as making them as colourful as possible really can help lower your risk of being compromised. Doing routine checks of devices is suggested, this obviously also means logging into email addresses more frequently and monitoring what access third-parties have. Using more than one way to authenticate is a good idea too.
Just to be sure.
Uncover how we can help put your resilience to the test.
