A huge data set with 773 million email addresses and 21 million passwords has appeared on the net. IT security expert Troy Hunt reported this at night.
Hunt calls the collection „Collection # 1“ because that’s the root folder he came across last week at cloud storage service Mega. The now disappeared, more than 87 gigabytes large data set bundles information „from many individual data thefts and thousands of different sources,“ as Hunt wrote in a blog entry.
The Microsoft employee operates the website Haveibeenpwned.com. In Hunt’s database, Internet users can verify that their e-mail addresses or passwords are affected by data theft. The „Collection # 1“ classifies Hunt as „unverified“, because a clear verification of legitimacy is not possible.
Security experts recommend using a separate password for each web page and storing it in a password manager. „Collection # 1“ also includes Austrian e-mail addresses with .at extensions.
