Data Breach Check Tool – Have I Been Pwned?
Learn how breach-check tools work, what they reveal about compromised accounts, and how to respond when your email appears in a breach.
How Breach Checkers Use Public Data Safely
Breach‑check tools aggregate data from publicly known breaches and let you search whether your email address appears in those datasets. Responsible services use techniques such as k‑anonymous queries or hashing so that your full address is never exposed in plain text to the server during lookup.
Finding your address in a breach does not mean someone has already accessed your account, but it does mean that the associated username or password was exposed at least once and should no longer be trusted.
What to Do If Your Address Appears in a Breach
If a breach search shows your email address, change passwords for the affected service immediately and anywhere else you reused the same or similar password. Turn on multi‑factor authentication and review account recovery options to ensure they point to current contact details.
Password managers make this process easier by tracking where each password is used and flagging known breaches. After you reset credentials, keep an eye out for phishing emails that reference the breached service or try to exploit the news of the incident.