ShareThis Data Breach Leaked Over 40 Million Accounts

Over 40 million users were affected by the ShareThis data breach. It happened in July 2018.

What information was leaked? Also, how can you protect your data?

Read on to learn more.

Introduction

Anytime a data breach can happen. In fact, we are almost used to reading news about breaches.

But in July 2018, 16 websites were affected by a single breach. So, it’s time to take these incidents seriously.

According to reports, these are the 16 affected websites:

In the list, ShareThis is in the top five attacked sites. So, it hit their companies badly.

ShareThis discovered the breach late. How so?

The security incident occurred in July 2018. But, they posted the notice in February 2019. So, it took seven months before they learned about it.

Moreover, if there was no report, they will not find it out. Also, its data are already on the dark web posted for sale.

According to the company’s report, it involved 2.7GB of stolen information. Also, the hackers posted it to the dark web market.

Unfortunately, it was posted for sale for less than $20,000 in Bitcoin currency.

So, what is the information involved? These are the affected data:

Upon finding out, they posted a notice for their users. They also expressed their regrets about the incident.

Moreover, they already deactivated the affected accounts to the breach. They also reviewed and improved their systems.

These actions help them know why the breach happened. Also, they coordinated with data security experts. Forensic investigators were also hired.

So, these teams help ShareThis identify the necessary steps. Thus, they can improve their security.

Furthermore, they sent notification emails to the users affected by the breach. Hence, users can take precautions for it.

As we discussed, ShareThis already deactivated the affected users. These users include those who registered before January 2017.

But, even if you haven’t logged into ShareThis for a while, don’t be complacent. Why?

You may be using the same email or passwords to your other accounts. So, hackers can still use that to gain access.

What’s worse? If you used those details to your bank account, they could log in!

So, we advise you to change passwords. Besides, change it as soon as possible. Don’t wait for breaches to happen.

Here are some good password habits.

Have a regular password change. Also, this is important whenever breaches happen.
Do not reuse passwords. So, you should use different passwords for every website.
Create strong and unique passwords. A strong password includes the capital and small letters. Also, special characters like symbols can add complexity. It should also have numbers.

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