Federal Government Information Technology

Have you been 'pwned' in a data breach? Troy Hunt can tell

Fifth Domain: Troy Hunt has collected a trove of 4.8 billion stolen identity records pulled from the darkest corners of the internet — but he isn’t a hacker.

Instead, he uses that repository to help ordinary people navigate the growing scourge of the corporate data breach. All that personal information was originally taken from brand-name services such as LinkedIn, Kickstarter, Dropbox, MySpace and the cheating website Ashley Madison, and later assembled by Hunt.

Working barefoot and in beachwear from his home office on Australia’s Gold Coast, the amiable security researcher set up his irreverent website, “Have I Been Pwned?” (POHND), in 2013. Millions of people have since used the free service to see if hackers have liberated their personal details from unwary companies and posted them online.

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