Unknown people stole more than 114 million access data records from the Gravatar online service and published them on the darknet. How to know if you are affected.

The Gravatar online service is believed to make it easier for users to centrally manage their profile pictures on the Internet. Apparently, though, the service made it easy for third parties to snatch stored user data.

Because now strangers have published a huge data package with 114 million user data records on the internet. Security platform HaveIbeenPwned.com has warned of this.

There it is reported that a year ago, in October 2020, a security researcher reported the possibility of how third parties could scrape large amounts of data from greywater, i.e. automatically skim it.

As a result, a total of 167 million names, usernames and email addresses that were not securely encrypted were stolen and stored. hacker– Community distributed.

Decrypted e-mail addresses in the network

114 million e-mail addresses have now been decrypted and are now being transmitted over the network as well. Hackers can also access Gravatar data associated with email addresses.

You can check if you have been affected by the data leak at HaveIbeenpwned.com by entering your email address. If your own address appears in a known data leak, you should – if it hasn’t already – change the password for the relevant service immediately.

If the password has been used for other services as well, it should be changed here as well, as criminals with captured user data often automatically check if they can access other services as well.

Experts recommend using a different password for each service. Password managers help you keep track of things and automatically generate secure passwords if you want. They are now integrated into all major browsers as well.