A new feature has been launched by an online security website “Have I been pwned” to let users find out whether their phone number or email is included in the huge Facebook data breach.

The personal data of more than 500 million Facebook users were leaked and placed on a hacking forum. The data included names, email addresses, and phone numbers.

The website “Have I been pwned” has always allowed people to look up whether their information has been exposed in the past data breaches. This time around, Troy Hunt, the security analyst who runs the site, was prompted to allow people to search phone numbers too following the data set containing far more phone numbers than email addresses.

 

Hunt said on a Twitter post that he saw a spike in numbers of people using “Have I been pwned” after the Facebook data breach broke news. He said the recent update would apply only to phone number leaked during this Facebook data breach and not prior.

In order to search for a phone number, the international format would have to be used – i.e with country and area codes, so a Philippine user would have to add +63 before their number and removing the 0.

3 Steps to Better Security

Additionally, the website adds recommendation to use 1Password.com  to generate better passwords for use or enable 2FA which in turn will be stored in the 1Password account.