Latest news with #1Password
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Business Standard
3 days ago
- Business Standard
Microsoft integrates 1Password with Windows 11 for passkey-based sign-ins
Microsoft's latest Windows 11 Dev build adds 1Password integration, allowing users to sign in with passkeys via Windows Hello. The update also includes browser and voice access improvements New Delhi Microsoft has rolled out a new Windows 11 Insider Preview Build for the Dev Channel, introducing several new features, including enhanced support for password-less sign-ins. Among the key updates is the integration of passkey management with 1Password, the popular credential manager. The update is part of Microsoft's wider push to offer a more secure and user-friendly login experience by adopting passkeys, a modern alternative to passwords that relies on biometric authentication. Passkey support with 1Password In collaboration with 1Password, Microsoft is enabling users to create and use passkeys on Windows 11 devices through the plugin credential manager. This feature is available in the latest Dev Channel build and allows passkeys to work seamlessly with Windows Hello. Here's how to set it up: On the Windows 11 PCs running the latest developer build: Install the 1Password beta on your Windows 11 PC Go to Settings – Passkeys – Advanced options Enable the plugin credential manager Toggle on support and verify identity using Windows Hello (face, fingerprint, or PIN) Once configured, users can sign in to supported websites using passkeys already saved in their credential manager or create new ones during website registrations. The setup ensures both security and convenience by replacing traditional passwords with biometric authentication. Microsoft says this is a step toward its vision of a password-less future, streamlining the sign-in process while maintaining strong user identity verification. Other changes in Windows 11 Dev Build Gradual rollout features include: Voice Access: Support for Japanese voice access has been temporarily disabled. Microsoft is addressing known issues before re-enabling it. Settings updates (EEA only): As introduced in Build 26200.5603, users in the European Economic Area can now manage their default browser from Settings. The newly set browser is automatically pinned to both the Taskbar and Start Menu Users can opt out by unchecking pinning options during the browser change process
The Verge
5 days ago
- The Verge
Microsoft is testing tighter integration with 1Password's passkeys in Windows.
Posted Jun 27, 2025 at 7:44 PM UTC Microsoft is testing tighter integration with 1Password's passkeys in Windows. The idea is to make using passkeys a little more seamless. But this isn't available to everyone just yet: Microsoft is initially rolling it out to Windows Insiders in the Dev Channel and you need to install the 1Password beta.
Time Magazine
7 days ago
- Business
- Time Magazine
How Ryan Reynolds Rewrote the Script for Celebrity Entrepreneurs
Pari Dukovic for TIME Ryan Reynolds is trying to focus on our conversation. But all he can think about is the script pulled up on his laptop. The screenwriting software Final Draft has frozen so he can't plug in his latest ideas for a project that he has asked me not to share. He reluctantly abandons his computer but can't help but fidget. Reynolds knows he'll only have a few hours later to return to the story before he's on dad duty. 'I'm obsessive,' he says. 'Even right now I'm thinking what I have after you, and if I can get back to it again.' His schedule after our interview is packed: a business meeting; someone is coming to fix Final Draft; then a walk-and-talk with Deadpool & Wolverine director Shawn Levy to discuss Levy's upcoming Star Wars movie starring the other Ryan—Gosling. We're sitting in the Tribeca home Reynolds shares with his wife, actor and entrepreneur Blake Lively, and their four children. The living area is lit by lamps with fringed shades, and the walls are covered in moody paintings that evoke Madonna and Child. Even the TV sits in a museum-worthy frame. Behind him, a bottle of Aviation Gin, one of many now-lucrative companies Reynolds invested in, sits prominently on a kitchen counter. While most people know him as the sardonic superhero Deadpool, Reynolds is also a wildly successful businessperson. Plenty of celebrities attach themselves to products. But Reynolds' production company and marketing firm Maximum Effort is a viral content machine. He takes hefty stakes in seemingly disparate small companies, promotes them—and has them promote each other—with playful quick-turn ads he calls 'fastvertising,' and then sells the businesses for millions. He has invested in Aviation Gin, the discount telecommunications company Mint Mobile, Welsh soccer team Wrexham AFC, and the cybersecurity app 1Password—to name a few. The companies he co-owns or has sold are valued at over $14 billion, according to Forbes . Reynolds has carried over his Hollywood playbook to the world of advertising: respect the audience's intelligence and have a little fun. 'Consumers know they're being marketed to, so acknowledge it,' he says. Levy, who has made three movies with Reynolds, believes that Reynolds' ability to create narratives for his businesses is his friend's superpower. 'He's really identified a core component to entrepreneurial success,' Levy says. 'And it connects back to our day jobs, which is storytelling.' He built this empire on his specific and identifiable brand: Reynolds is the popular guy, blessed with Canadian affability and a cynical sense of humor. He frequently collaborates with celebrities like Hugh Jackman and Channing Tatum with whom he seems to have developed genuine friendships. He and his famous wife flirt online. His social media is perfectly calibrated: he's either writing self-consciously sophomoric posts on social media about shots of monkey penises in a nature docuseries he's producing or pranking Wrexham AFC co-owner and fellow actor Rob McElhenney. He knows when to deploy snark and when to be earnest. And after years as a movie star, he's built a public profile that's less heartthrob and more everydad: He sports glasses gifted to him by David Beckham and loves to crack jokes about how, now that he's pushing 50, he won't always be able to squeeze into the skin-tight Deadpool suit. Reynolds does admit to a deep-rooted need to be liked—probably related to being the youngest of four brothers vying for validation from a withholding cop father. 'I am people-pleasing by default, as is my wife, as are our first two children,' he says.'The third was, you know, born flipping the bird. And the fourth is TBD.' Reynolds knows the trait is a double-edged sword: 'Your boundaries can kind of melt and that's not necessarily healthy.' When Reynolds drops his kids off at school, he likes to remind them, 'Disappoint one person today!'' Reynolds admits he struggles to follow his own advice. But at least he's figured out a way to channel this perceived weakness into a strength: He knows how to charm A-listers, CEOs, and—crucially—the consumer. In another life, Reynolds would have been the chief marketing officer of a Fortune 500 company. He just happened to become one of the world's biggest movie stars instead. Photograph by Pari Dukovic for TIME Buy a copy of the TIME100 Companies issue here Reynolds spent 45 minutes at college before he dropped out and drove to Los Angeles with dreams of joining the famed improv group The Groundlings, only to be told he'd need to pay for classes. Undeterred, Reynolds eventually found a steady gig on the sitcom Two Guys, A Girl, and a Pizza Place and established a reputation for playing smart alecs that carried over into comedies like Van Wilder and The Proposal . 'I didn't get famous until I was older,' Reynolds says. (For reference, he was named Sexiest Man Alive by People Magazine at 34.) 'Thank God. I would be dead if it happened in my early 20s.' His transition to superhero, a rite of passage for leading men in Hollywood in the '00s, was rocky. He snagged supporting roles in Blade: Trinity and X-Men Origins: Wolverine . In the latter, he played Deadpool—a fourth-wall-breaking wiseacre that perfectly aligned with Reynolds' sense of humor—only for the writers to make the bizarre decision to sew the character's mouth shut. It took more than 10 years for Reynolds to push his version of the Merc With a Mouth onto the big screen—and only after test footage for a Deadpool solo film mysteriously leaked online and went viral, forcing the studio's hand. Fox granted Deadpool a relatively small budget. That was fine by Reynolds. After starring in the 2011 box office bomb Green Lantern he learned that bloat is the enemy of creativity. 'I saw a lot of money being spent on special effects, all sorts of stuff. And I remember suggesting, 'Why don't we write a scene the way people would talk? I don't know, it could be a fun exchange of dialogue that doesn't cost anything?'' The flop also taught him to take control of his own destiny. 'When it failed, it's not the director's name out there. It's my name,' he says. 'I want to be the architect of my own demise or the author of my own success.' Reynolds put his money where his (no-longer-sewn-shut) mouth was. He paid to fly the writers to the Deadpool set because he needed to work with them in person to finesse the movie's comedic tone. With a modest budget, Reynolds drove crowds to the 2016 movie with surprising strategies like advertising on Tinder. Last year, the third entry in the franchise, Deadpool & Wolverine , became the highest-grossing R-rated movie ever, grossing $1.3 billion dollars and saving the flagging Marvel Studios from a grim year at the 2024 box office. Despite Deadpool's massive cultural footprint, Green Lantern remains his toddler son's favorite film. Ryan Reynolds greets fans during the Deadpool & Wolverine World Premiere on July 22, 2024 in New York City. Noam Galai—Disney/Getty Images Maximum Effort, co-founded in 2018 with former Fox head of digital theatrical marketing George Dewey and named for a line in Deadpool , was forged from the bootstrap promotion of the first film. 'Maximum Effort' also serves as Reynolds' life motto. 'I can't say I've invested every cell of my body into something that failed,' he admits. 'The things that I've failed at, I usually didn't fully believe in.' That same year, Reynolds invested in Aviation Gin. Rather than just lending his face to the brand, Reynolds pitched a cheeky marketing strategy that riffed on his own persona—he filmed a Father's Day commercial in which he invented a cocktail called 'the vasectomy.' Maximum Effort's 50-some employees frequently collaborate with MNTN, the advertising platform for which Reynolds serves as chief creative officer. Mark Douglas, MNTN's CEO, recently had lunch with Reynolds and ambassadors from a brand. 'They were describing themselves and what they do, and right at the table he created a commercial in front of them,' Douglas says. 'He just imagined how he would tell this story in 30 seconds on television.' The year after Reynolds' investment, Aviation increased its volumes by 100%. The U.K.-based Diageo bought the liquor company for $610 million in 2020. Next, Reynolds bought 25% of Mint Mobile, a discount telecom company with little brand recognition. Mint Mobile raised revenue by nearly 50,000% from 2017 to 2020, according to TechCrunch, thanks in no small part to Reynolds' omnipresent ads. Mint sold to T-Mobile for $1.35 billion in 2023. Many actors care as much or more about building their brand as honing their craft. When I tell Reynolds that some skeptics object to the practice of pursuing commercial gain to the possible detriment of artistic achievement, he squints in surprise. 'You think that there are young actors who are like, 'I want to get famous so I can own a brand that sells lots of stuff?'' he asks. I do. 'I'm not saying I'm the exception to the rule, but I love marketing,' he says. 'It's diet storytelling. You can look at a commercial through the same prism you would look at a movie. I get a lot of creative fulfillment out of that. You cannot be as precious about it, because it's just a f-cking commercial. But as long as you acknowledge to the consumer they're being marketed to, then there's an authenticity to it.' That earnestness helps Reynolds stand out in a crowd of celebrity spokespeople. 'When people say, 'What's he really like?' I say exactly what you think,' says McElhenney. 'There's no higher compliment you can give someone in our business than they're exactly who they say they are because so many people create a public persona that is not congruent with who they really are. With Ryan, you don't feel like you're being sold a bill of goods.' __________________________________________ When Reynolds is stopped on the street, he doesn't just take selfies with fans. He asks who the most important person in their life is, and records a video for that person. He can't seem to help himself. Over the course of several weeks, I watch him walk into room after room and pitch jokes, marketing concepts, and movie ideas to anyone and everyone. He exchanges horror stories with a photographer about tantrums at school drop-off and compares notes with me about the techniques we learned in our respective toddler CPR classes. That approachability can create problems in his real life, like when he visits his kids' school and their classmates start asking him about Deadpool. 'I see my daughter's lips tighten,' he admits. 'I don't want to be closed off to the other kids. So I don't really know how to play it.' But it benefits his bottom line. When an ill-advised Peloton ad that featured a husband monitoring his wife's fitness journey went viral in 2019, Reynolds called up the actress and convinced her to appear in one for Aviation Gin. The commercial's star, Monica Ruiz, took a good deal of convincing. But Reynolds can talk anyone into just about anything. Or just about: After the photoshoot to accompany this story, Reynolds repeatedly pitched TIME's editors on a cover featuring the back of his head instead of his face. Ryan Reynolds behind-the-scenes at his TIME cover shoot in April in New York City. 'Oftentimes I create, perhaps too much, an accessibility,' he says. 'I don't like a filtration system. A game of telephone is a terrible way to communicate. They need to hear your voice. They need to feel your emotional investment. They need to feel your gratitude if they've done something great.' That instinct to build connections has served him well in turbulent moments. If you've glanced at social media in the last year, you probably know that Lively filed a sexual harassment and retaliation complaint against Justin Baldoni, her co-star and director of the film It Ends With Us in December 2024: According to a New York Times report, Baldoni hired a crisis PR manager who had previously represented clients like Johnny Depp. Baldoni then sued Lively, Reynolds, their publicist, and the Times for defamation and conspiracy to damage his career with what he said is a false accusation . A judge recently threw out Baldoni's countersuit, and is allowing Lively's suits to proceed. But the situation has taken on a life of its own in the tabloids and on TikTok. Even my celebrity-agnostic relatives asked about it when I mentioned I was interviewing Reynolds. The couple is declining to speak about it. Still, I ask Reynolds whether the tabloids and online discourse have impacted his bottom line. He is, after all, the face of all these companies. That visibility has perks—like being able to deploy Deadpool in commercials—but surely some CEOs get nervous about gossip. 'I can read something that says, 'He should be drawn and quartered. I could read something that says I should win a Nobel Prize. Both are meaningless,' Reynolds says. 'None of us are comprised of our best moments. None of us are defined by our worst moments. We are something in the middle.' A week later, when I push him on whether headlines can affect his brand and business relationships, he's more pointed. 'Accessibility and accountability are a big part of how I do things,' he says. 'The people that I work with know me, so there's never a question of anything like that. If you operate with some degree of core values and integrity, they're going to help you up. If you're an asshole, they're not. And that's pretty simple.' Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds attend 2025 TIME 100 Gala at Jazz at Lincoln Center on April 24, 2025 in New York. Paul Bruinooge—Just then, Lively pops into the room wearing leggings and an oversized shirt. She wants to check in with Reynolds about coordinating their schedules for 10 minutes of catch-up time. As they compare their calendars, Lively offers me her favorite snack, sour dried blueberries that she says taste like Warheads and begins to rummage through their drawers trying to locate them. Reynolds leaps up to help her. 'You're chewing into your time,' Lively jokingly scolds her husband. But Reynolds seems rather zen about any tumultuous turns in his public life. He attributes this perspective to an incident early in his life when he got into a brawl with a friend. 'I skipped rehab in my 20s and decided to go to conflict-resolution workshops in Santa Fe,' he says. 'Conflict resolution changed my life in a way that I can't quantify. You don't have to agree with the person. You can empathize, you can validate. You can do all those things and get closer to them without having to just blindly agree or win or lose.' __________________________________________ Reynolds has been on a hot streak lately. MNTN went public in May with a valuation of $1.2 billion. In April, Wrexham AFC made history as the first team to ever achieve three consecutive promotions up the ranks of a brutal British pyramid system. McElhenney pitched Reynolds on sponsoring a soccer team in 2020 during the pandemic. But when Reynolds heard McElhenney's larger vision for a docuseries about a downtrodden town whose fortunes were inextricably tied to the long-suffering club, he immediately knew the story had mass appeal. He suggested they buy the team together. 'Ryan's involvement took this from a very small endeavor to a very large endeavor overnight because he has the ability to connect with millions and millions of people,' says McEllhenney. 'And I don't just mean on social media. I mean spiritually.' McElhenney and Reynolds had never actually met in person, just texted about collaborating some day. 'I made sure to call around and talk to people he worked with, and you heard the same words over and over again. How optimistic he is, how driven and ambitious he is, but not at the cost of his own values. When things get dark, as they often do for everyone, he is a beacon of light I know I can count on. I think other people feel that.' Wrexham's revenue last year reached £26.7 million, a 155% increase on the year prior. Welcome to Wrexham , a show Maximum Effort produces chronicling the team's rise, has won eight Emmys in four seasons. While the project's mission was noble—to boost a struggling mining town—it also served as a Maximum Effort flex: It could make American consumers, historically agnostic toward soccer, care about a down-and-out Welsh football club. Wrexham players now feature in Super Bowl commercials for SToK Cold Brew with Tatum and make cameos in Deadpool movies. Betty Buzz, Lively's beverage company, became a sponsor for both the men's and women's teams, as did Aviation Gin. Wrexham co-owners Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney celebrate after Wrexham scores on April 26, 2025 in Wrexham. The team won against Charlton Athletic 3-0, earning a promotion to the Championship league. Martin Rickett—Reynolds claims he still knows very little about soccer, let alone the ins and outs of an IPO. 'I was a lousy student,' he admits. 'I was in remedial 10th grade math when I was in the twelfth grade. It was humiliating.' But it also taught him humility. 'We don't pretend to be football experts. The average four-year-old in Wrexham knows more about football than we ever will. But we can invest in players, invest in character over talent—that's more valuable than a poisonous person in a locker room who scores a lot of goals. And we can tell their story.' They hope to repeat the formula: McElhenney and Reynolds have now teamed up with Eva Longoria to invest in a Mexican soccer team that will become the basis for another series. They went in on an F1 team with Michael B. Jordan, and Reynolds just bought a sailing team with Hugh Jackman. Meanwhile, Wrexham is just one season away from competing at soccer's highest level. 'Thinking back to that first press conference there and saying, our objective is to make it to the Premier League. And you know, everybody tittering and laughing a little, and that's okay. I'm not judging them for that. But then now it's starting to look very, very real,' Reynolds says. 'I am feeling elation but also panic. Growing is great but growing too fast is a frightening proposition.' But Maximum Effort must grow. Next up, the company is producing a documentary about Reynolds' fellow Canadian comedian John Candy that will open the Toronto Film Festival. Reynolds isn't abandoning his acting career anytime soon. During our talk at the TIME100 Summit he teased that he 'thinks' Deadpool will show up in Marvel films again, though he believes that the character works better as a supporting player than a leading man: 'I'm writing a little something right now that is an ensemble.' At 48, his entrepreneurship is, perhaps, a buffer for the inevitable decline in fame. 'All those years living in LA, they will always take your name down from the marquee. That's going to happen like death and taxes,' he says. 'It's not a great feeling. That's why inevitably we are in New York because there's more than one industry here.' And when Reynolds' name is no longer in lights, he has, as McElhenney puts it, alcohol-baron money to fall back on. Reynolds insists his value isn't tied to any single venture. 'It comes from having four kids and a good marriage,' he says. Besides, he's too busy to worry about it. He's got a script to work on and a family meeting to squeeze in before his jaunt around Manhattan with one of Hollywood's most in-demand directors. 'My self-worth isn't farmed out to any one thing that isn't under the roof of my home.'
Rakyat Post
24-06-2025
- Rakyat Post
16 Billion Passwords Allegedly Leaked Online, Here's What You Should Do
Subscribe to our FREE Cybersecurity is becoming more important than ever. We all own devices that carry very sensitive data such as personal information, emails, passwords, private chats, and more. In what's being called the But before you panic, here's what you really need to know and how to protect yourself. So, what actually happened? This wasn't a single hack of a company like Google or Apple. Instead, cybersecurity researchers Think of it as a huge digital dump yard where hackers collected login info from many sources, all in one place. The data includes billions of email addresses and passwords – many of which are in plain text, meaning they're readable and usable by anyone. Could your password be in there? There is no definite yes or no, but a maybe. Even if your password was leaked in a past breach years ago, it could still be part of this massive compilation. And if you've reused the same password across multiple websites, that puts you at serious risk. Tech news website Cybercriminals use tools that let them quickly test these passwords on popular sites like email providers, banks, shopping sites, and social media. This is called credential stuffing – and it works more often than you'd think. Should you be worried about this leak? Well, when it comes to cybersecurity, you should always be worried. In this incident however, there's no need to panic (yet). According to IT news site Backing this up is a tweet from vx-underground, an educational website that specialises in malware and cybersecurity. No. Someone took a bunch of existing leaks, threw it all together, and slapped a NEW stick on it. — vx-underground (@vxunderground) It's important to note that even old passwords can be dangerous if you're still using them. What you should do with all your existing online accounts Now that you know that there was a data leak that could potentially be dangerous, the most important step is to adopt good cybersecurity habits you should already be following. The first thing you should check is your passwords, and when was the last time you changed them. Use trusted password generators and managers such as 1Password or Norton Password Manager. If you're using an Apple Image: iPhone Life However, unique passwords won't guarantee protection if you are hacked, fall for a phishing attack, or install malware. It's crucial that you also use two-factor authentication (2FA) along with an authentication app, like These days, social media apps like Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), and TikTok also feature passkeys, a more secure and user-friendly alternative to passwords for logging into accounts. It's never a bad idea to add more layers of security to protect your data. Password manager app Dashlane has a handy explanation on passkeys Beyond changing your passwords every now and then, here's one last reminder to never ever share sensitive personal information or passwords with anyone, no matter how much you trust them. Share your thoughts with us via TRP's . Get more stories like this to your inbox by signing up for our newsletter.
Tom's Guide
20-06-2025
- Tom's Guide
Worried about the 16 billion data breach? I've been hacked, and this is everything I did to fix it
I have a confession to make: I used to reuse passwords. It's the number one security sin, but this was over a decade ago and I didn't know about the best password managers yet. This was a huge mistake. And with news that researchers just uncovered a database of 16 billion records, including passwords and other sensitive data, this could be a problem for you, too. Details are scarce — we don't know where the data came from or who is behind it — but the most important thing is try and look past the feelings of anxiety, and take practical steps to improve your security, and I should know; I've been hacked before. In 2013, Adobe was hacked and the attackers got a list of 153 million usernames and passwords. These passwords weren't encrypted which allowed people to read them — they were stored in plaintext — so once the list was out, attackers had all they needed to target unfortunate Adobe users like me. It was a stressful time and given that your email account houses some of your most sensitive information, once they had access to that account, they could reset your passwords to lock you out of other websites and services too. But I kicked them out and learned pretty quickly how to protect myself from then on. More than a decade later, there are still attackers trying to get into my account, but there's an important difference — they can't now. So, I now feels like the perfect moment to share how I learnt from my mistakes and how you can easily improve your security to stop the same thing happening to you. Okay, you've probably already guessed this one from earlier in the story, but one of the major issues I had when the Adobe hack happened was I was using the same password on multiple sites. So it was pretty easy for the attackers to use credential stuffing and break into my other accounts too. Like others, the reason I did this is because there are a lot of passwords to remember! I obviously didn't want to get locked out of an account, and password reset forms aren't always that reliable, so I decided that the best course of action was a simple, easy to remember password I could use on all sites. I thought it was secure as it has numbers, capital numbers and symbols. It wasn't quite as risky as using 'password' or 'passw0rd,' but it wasn't far off. The best way to avoid this issue is to use a password manager like 1Password or Proton Pass (my preferred option). These store all your credentials in one place securely and can generate long, complex passwords for you to use, but never need to remember. Most have apps for your browser, computer and smartphone too, so you always have access to your passwords. One of the reasons attackers can get into some accounts so easily is that once they have your username and password, they can just sign in as if they're you. But what if you had a unique token to show that you are really you, and without it, someone can't access your account? That's the idea behind two-factor authentication (2FA). If you haven't used this on your personal accounts, you may have done at work. It comes in various forms, but the most common are six-digit codes generated by an app or sent to your phone by SMS. Requiring one of these codes along with your login details shows that not only do you know the username and password, but you have a known physical item with you that helps to verify it's really you trying to log in. This is one of the most effective ways to cut attackers off from your accounts, even if your passwords gets leaked. After I set this up for my Microsoft account (using the free Authy app on my smartphone), hackers kept trying to get into my account, but they never can. It's an easy way to shore up your defences. I only know this, though, because Microsoft has a really useful Account Activity page which shows when and where sign in attempts come from and whether they were successful. If you want even more security for your online accounts, you may also want to consider using a physical security key instead. There's not really a lot to say on this one: if you don't use an account anymore, delete it. It's good to have a cleanup from time to time, and getting rid of old or dormant accounts means less clutter and fewer opportunities for your data to go awry. Not every site gives you an easy 'Delete account' button, but if you head to the company's privacy policy (usually linked in the footer at the bottom of a website), you can find a privacy contact and send an email to request they delete your data. Plus, in the years since I was hacked, authorities around the world have strengthened privacy regulations, so in many places, there's now a legal obligation for the business to comply with your request. This is why you can do things like delete your Google account so easily these days. Yes, Have I Been Pwned is a strange name for a security website (pwn is hacker slag for gaining unauthorized access), but it is easy one of the best free security resources for protecting your accounts. Troy Hunt, the man behind the site, collates data from hacks and can send you alerts when your account is involved. This is how I would later find out my details were leaked in the MyFitnessPal, NetGalley, LinkedIn and breaches, alongside many, many more — usually random sites I had no memory of even signing up to (and had probably stored my details for at least a decade without my realizing). It's easy to use and gives you a very early heads up when you need to change passwords on a hacked account. Hacked data can be messy and difficult to verify, so if you want to check if a specific password has been compromised, there's a searchable Pwned Passwords database too. As things stand right now, Have I Been Pwned hasn't loaded this database into its system (the researchers said the data was only exposed briefly, so it's not publicly accessible, and HIBP does thorough verification checks before adding any breach). By the time hackers were knocking at my virtual door, I'd used my Hotmail email account for almost 15 years. It had built up a long history, and now it was a target, I decided it was time for a fresh start. That's when I switched from Outlook to Gmail, and more recently, to Proton Mail (which we rate as the best email service for security). It was a lot of work — I won't lie to you about that. Going through every account that I had, changing the email address, creating a new password, and setting up 2FA was a big time suck. But it was worth it. My current address has only been involved in one leak (thanks, Twitter), and so there's less of my data floating around. Plus, starting from scratch meant that I could make more deliberate security choices. I became more mindful which services I chose to sign up to, where I put my details and how I protected the account. I rarely use my actual phone number unless I have to, and I make sure I opt out of marketing lists. These aren't fool-proof techniques that'll keep your account secure forever; your data is at the mercy of whichever company controls the account. But it does mean I've had fewer security issues, I don't need to worry that someone will get into my account (as they can't) and I barely get any spam emails now too.
