Mass. IT expert says ‘time really is of the essence’ after 16 billion logins potentially exposed

BOSTON — Security experts say to change your passwords now after up to 16 billion user logins were potentially exposed in a recent data breach.

“This is one of those things where time really is of the essence, and the faster you can change at least your most important passwords,” Bean said. “I would definitely start there and try to get that done in the next 24 hours,” IT expert Delcie Bean said.

Independent news tech site ‘Cybernews’ discovered the breach that could put names, addresses, usernames, and passwords at risk, allowing hackers to possibly access personal information.

“The best thing to do is just assume that your data was a part of this and everybody’s data was part of this,” Bean said.

“I mean there’s going to be a gold rush, for a lack of a better term, right now where these hackers are going to be scraping this database, they’re going to build bots that are going to take the data from the database and try to use that data to try to log in to all of your services,” Bean continued.

Each account should be set to a different and randomly generated complex password.

“And to do that, you’re going to want to use a service like a password management service, LastPass is a common one, but there’s many others.”

Bean said to make sure multi-factor authentication is enabled on your accounts, especially the critical ones, and have Passkey on your phone.

“What that allows you to do is it actually creates a trust relationship between your physical device, usually your facial recognition or your fingerprint, and then the website.”

Experts also suggest paying close attention to any emails that say there’s been a login to an account from a new device.

This is a developing story. Check back for updates as more information becomes available.

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