Mark Maunder – Wordfence Founder/CEO – @mmaunder

Update: How to check if your account is already compromised

I’ve had two requests in the comments about this so I’m adding this section now. (at 9:39am Pacific time, 12:39am EST).

There is no sure way to check if your account has been compromised. If in doubt, change your password immediately. Changing your password every few months is good practice in general.

If you use GMail, you can check your login activity to find out of someone else is signing into your account. Visit https://support.google.com/mail/answer/45938?hl=en for info. To use this feature, scroll to the bottom of your inbox and click “Details” (very small in the far lower right hand corner of the screen). This will show you all currently active sessions as well as your recent login history. If you see active logins from unknown sources, you can force close them. If you see any logins in your history from places you don’t know, you may have been hacked. [Thanks Ken, I pasted your comment in here almost verbatim. Very helpful.]

There is a trustworthy site run by Troy Hunt who is a well known security researcher where you can check if any of your email accounts have been part of a data leak. Troy’s site is https://haveibeenpwned.com/ and it is well known in security circles. Simply enter your email address and hit the button.

Troy aggregates data leaks into a database and gives you a way to look up your own email in that database to see if you have been part of a data breach. He also does a good job of actually verifying the data breaches he is sent.