Check if any of your online ‘identities’ have been compromised with Hack Notice

Steve McGuiganSecurityLeave a Comment

Have you ever wondered if your gmail account has been hacked? Or your Amazon account details leaked somewhere on the dark web? A website called Hack Notice can help you find out.

What is Hack Notice?

Hack Notice is a website that allows you to enter in your “identities” to be monitored. These can be particular email addresses or freetext strings. They will then check known data breaches and display what has been found. I have an AOL account that is roughly 10-12 years old. AOL has been breached a good number of times, so I knew I’d find some interesting things out. Hack Notice was able to tell me that an old password of mine is floating around accompanied by my email address and and that AOL has been breached 15 times since 2006.

Now, the mischievous of you may be thinking “Couldn’t I just use this to monitor someone else’s email address and then use the details found to hack them?”. The answer is no. To add an email address to the watch list you first must verify that you own it by clicking a link sent via email.

The freetext monitor is particularly helpful for keeping an eye on other 'identities' such as your Amazon account or even online banking. You could change the username of these accounts to something that would be a safe bet would be unique, such as 'OpT1m@Amazon'. If that string ever shows up in a known data breach then Hack Notice will let you know! It's totally safe as you don't even need to tell Hack Notice what the account is for.

Monitor the sites you use

You are also able to set Hack Notice to monitor websites, so if one of these websites is breached you will receive a notification letting you know. This gives a you head start on changing your passwords and keeping your information secured. It does not however, let you know whether you are directly affected but general rule of thumb is, if something you use has been breached you change everything regardless.

Hack Notice in Summary

Hack Notice also have a browser extension, it could do with a bit of love and care as it does have a windows 95 feel to it. But its job is simple, if you visit a website that is on their list of compromised sites it will give you a little pop up which can then redirect you to the main site and display additional information about the incident.

The concept is bullet proof and from what I have seen so far It does its job very well. I plan on using Hack Notice for the foreseeable future as it does look to be a very handy website/extension.

Visit: hacknotice.com


About the Author

A picture of Steve McGuigan the author of this blog

Steve McGuigan

Network Engineer


Steve is one of our Network Engineers. He was born and raised in Crawley, West Sussex. After completing his GCSE’s he found a job as a Domestic IT Technician for an independent Computer Repair company in Redhill. This saw him travelling around Surrey and West Sussex repairing people’s PCs, laptops, Macs and even the odd mobile phone.


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