Hi

Last night, I couldn't sleep in this hellish heat! And I came across this site that determines the theft of our data via our emails.
https://haveibeenpwned.com/

All my Gmail addresses have been stolen from various sites. Except for one! What luck!

The site indicates the date, the type of data stolen and the websites concerned. It's amazing!

I use Thunderbird with a few addresses to register on sites I don't really care about, and I have an address for all my administrative procedures and the purchase of hardware and plugins with my Mastercard or my bank account.

I'd like to stop using Gmail but I don't know what to use. Something that's a real safe.

I'm pretty paranoid about online security

And does this site steal my data too? What a nightmare!

Back to you. Have I Been Pwned...

 

It's normal for your email address to appear there these days, because wherever companies, etc.,
are hacked, your email address will be available on the dark web, etc. But your passwords are crucial.

First, change your password. Use at least 12 numbers, letters, and special characters.
Write it legibly on a piece of paper and keep it in a safe place.

You can set up advanced authentication with Google. It means more work, but also more security.
Never open emails you don't recognize, and never accept file attachments from people you don't know.

Be careful what you do with your smartphone! It's better to avoid online banking.
Learn about identity theft as a preventative measure!

I'm also a Google user. Google has the advantage of having infinite money and therefore

 

Thank you for advises. I have very strong passwords now with special caracters. And I frequently change my account bank passwords because we have to use our smartphone to complete a purchase we started on a computer. It's double authentication.
And to pay with my smartphone in a supermarket, I only use my bank's application if I've forgotten my Mastercard and I have to use a password for this app. It's happened to me once or twice that I've forgotten my wallet, so paying with your smartphone can be a solution, but without going through Google.

 

You also need RFID protection sleeves for your cards in your wallet. They are coated with aluminum so that no one can read them while you're out and about. These sleeves are very inexpensive; I have protected all my cards with a chip against illegal reading. Of course, there are also entire wallets and cell phone cases designed to protect against illegal reading.

Contactless card theft - How to protect your credit cards from RFID theft for FREE

 

Thanks

I'll look into it.

 

You can't stop email addresses from leaking out onto the internet. It's not the email provider's fault if another website's database gets leaked or hacked. As long as you don't re-use your email address' password anywhere else and the password is a long sequence of letters + special characters and is protected by 2FA, you'll likely be good.

What you can do is use anonymising forwarders like Apple's Hide My Email or Mozilla's Firefox Relay - both free. Those give you email aliases like [email protected] that forward incoming mail to your real address.

You could set up a new 'real' email with eg. Proton and only ever use 'fake' forwarders when signing up to websites. That way, your Proton address has a pretty good chance of not leaking out.

If one of the forwarders leaks out, get a new one, change your email address on the leaking website and disable the old forwarder.

This does introduce another point of failure though - the forwarding service might stop working at some point, or they might start charging €€€. Quite a few websites do not accept forwarding addresses when signing up either.