Urgent warning issued for US consumers after ‘security breach’ of 184,000,000 passwords — here’s who’s exposed and how to protect yourself

The cloud comes at a cost

In a small 10,000-record sample, Fowler found hundreds of compromised accounts including major consumer platforms like Netflix, PayPal, Amazon and Apple. A keyword search revealed 187 mentions of “bank” and 57 of “wallet,” suggesting the breach may have exposed financial data, too. Perhaps most concerning, however, was the discovery of 220 email addresses associated with .gov domains, raising the possibility of broader implications for national security.

The scale of cyberattacks isn’t just growing but evolving in ways that are becoming much harder to contain, track and remediate.

In 2023, data breaches jumped 72% compared to the year before, but the number of victims actually declined to about 353 million, according to The Identity Theft Resource Center (ITRC) 2024 Annual Data Breach Report. But that all changed in 2024. While the number of breaches remained high, the number of people impacted surged by 312% — a dramatic shift driven by mega-breaches that hit not just companies, but their entire digital ecosystems.

As more companies shift to cloud services like AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure to cut costs, they’re also opening their door to hackers. A recent IBM report found that 82% of data breaches last year involved information stored in the cloud, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.

That kind of exposure can carry a hefty price tag — and recent breaches are showing just how costly a single vulnerability can be. Take crypto exchange Coinbase: on May 11, the company received a ransom email after bad actors bribed overseas support agents to steal internal information.

“These insiders abused their access to customer support systems to steal the account data for a small subset of customers,” the company said in a blog post. While the company says it didn’t pay, the breach could cost up to $400 million to fix.

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Protecting yourself

Protecting your personal information online doesn’t require a tech degree — but it does take intention.

“This is perhaps a kick in the pants for some people who’ve been a little bit lax in doing some of the things we talk about,” said Teresa Murray of the U.S. Public Interest Research Group.

Murray suggests changing your passwords now and says one of the easiest things you can do is regularly update your passwords — and never reuse the same one (or even a similar one) across multiple sites. Your primary email and financial accounts should have strong, unique passwords that aren’t used anywhere else.

Murray also recommends freezing your credit files with all three major credit bureaus — Equifax, Experian and TransUnion — and leaving them frozen until you need to make a major purchase. This won’t affect your credit score, but it will make it much harder for criminals to open new accounts in your name.

Another step you can take is to enable multi-factor authentication (MFA) wherever it’s available. This adds an extra layer of protection, even if a hacker does get their hands on your login credentials. You can also use free tools like Google’s Password Checkup to see if your information has been compromised in a breach. If it has, update your login credentials as soon as possible.

Finally, sign up for transaction alerts from your credit card provider and make sure your contact details are up to date. When it comes to cybersecurity, vigilance really does pay.