Illinois Residents Urged to Update Passwords After Major Breach

Not gonna lie—this whole password breach thing has me a little freaked out because someone just tried hacking into my Facebook account this week.

I got a notification that someone tried changing my Facebook password, so when I went to change it to secure my account, Facebook locked me out for four days. Four agonizing days not being able to scroll on Facebook (I know, first world problems).

Now I see over 16 million others have been affected, too. Login credentials have been leaked online and this is reported to be one of the biggest breaches, ever.

Canva

It's not just usernames and passwords, it's way more than that! Lots of personal information released to hackers for no good reason.

"According to researchers at Cybernews, who announced the alarming number this week as part of an ongoing investigation that began at the start of the year, the information in the exposed datasets “opens the doors to pretty much any online service imaginable, from Apple, Facebook, and Google, to GitHub, Telegram, and various government services.”" [msn]

If your information has been compromised, you should change you passwords immediately. The leaked information gives hackers access to everything from Facebook info to your Apple ID info.

"They cautioned that some reports claiming that Facebook, Google, and Apple accounts were leaked are a little misleading. Bob Diachenko, one of the researchers, told Cybernews that “there was no centralized data breach at any of these companies.” But he added that some of the credentials that were leaked contained login URLs to those sites, opening access to accounts there." [MSN]

If you've never been hacked before, don't let this be the first time. I've always been good about changing my passwords often, but this time the almost got me. It can happen to anyone, anytime, and anywhere.

Change your passwords!