Urban Dictionary: pwned
A corruption of the word “Owned.” This originated in an online game called Warcraft, where a map designer misspelled “owned.” When the computer beat a player, it was supposed to say, so-and-so “has been owned.” Instead, it said, so-and-so “has been pwned.” It basically means “to own” or to be dominated by an opponent or situation, especially by some god-like or computer-like force.
This simple website has access to all the known compromised databases of emails and passwords out there and is the easiest way to see if a Hacker has access to one of your passwords.
The website allows you to enter your email address and if you had an account using that email address with a company that was breached it will alert you that your email appears in a pwned database. This means that at some point in history a site was hacked, and someone had the opportunity to see your password – it does not mean your email has been hacked
The risk here, is that if you use the same password everywhere or havent changed your password in a while someone could use the combination of your email address and password to see where they can log into, eMails, Facebook, Twitter, Online Banking etc. And cause havoc for you.
Best port of call here, if your show as being PWNed – change your password pronto!
If you are give the all clear and your email has not been found in any databases, that’s great, but it still could be found from one of the many sites out there being breached in the future. You can subscribe to alerts from https://haveibeenpwned.com/NotifyMe and they will email you if your email address every appears in a hacked database in the future.
This is article 2 of 5 and over the next 3 weeks we will be releasing a new article (every Friday) of different methods you can use, and are recommended by CETSAT on steps you can take to secure your email accounts and other online data. Please check back on the 26th October for our next article.
Make sure to go back and read our previous article on Why you should use 2FA
