5 ms·

I found the info not actionable because it wouldn’t say what actual values were posted. I have a common name Gmail account. The password is rather complex and

by prepend 10mo ago

I found the info not actionable because it wouldn’t say what actual values were posted. I have a common name Gmail account. The password is rather complex and I would be surprised if it leaks as only I and Google know it. However, I would get reports that it’s on the dark web with blanked out password values. So I never knew if they actually compromised or just something else. They would also report when some random site that used my Gmail address as user id was on the darknet that I don’t care about. I don’t care if my fidofido account is leaked. I never use it and if I did, then I would reset. I think if the data were useful Google would have kept this up. I bet they keep tracking though, just keep the reports internal.

thesuitonym 10mo ago
I never got the Google dark web reports, but my credit card used to send me reports constantly saying that my email address was 'found on the darkweb.' Okay, that's not useful information. If it showed me if there were associated passwords, that might be helpful, but just saying my address was found on the darkweb is meaningless. My email address is public information. The worst part is, it was an email address I hadn't used in about 10 years, and they wouldn't let me take it out of the report.
- deepsun 10mo ago
  Well you could change the email address you use for the financial services only, and keep it secret. Then it would be harder to impersonate you.
  - placatedmayhem 10mo ago
    Or, use a service that lets you generate an address for each business you deal with or use case you have so you can treat them as disposable. After chasing down spammers and companies selling my info, including my email, I found this was easier to keep up with and is more effective. Spam me once or sell it to another company, and I burn that address, replacing it with the original company if I really need them to keep in contact.
    - deepsun 10mo ago
      I tried to do that but found out there's almost no services that I would want to treat my account there disposable. If I bother to provide them my email address -- I usually also want to access my account there later (e.g check order status). There are tens of services where I'd like it disposable, but hundreds of services where account is warranted. And some of those thousands will be compromised some day.
      - Terr_ 10mo ago
        I'd distinguish between an address one can choose to dispose of in an organized way versus an account you don't want to lose access to. I have my own domain, and pay a hosting company to manage the e-mail, which means it's easy to have ton of forwarding-only addresses for different purposes. This means that I register with mybank123@domain, if that ever leaks I can log in with them and change my e-mail to a new forwarding-address of mybank456@domain. Then retire the older one.
      - godelski 10mo ago
        You can do this with aliases. For example Firefox's relay (or you can do it with a website and cloudflare). They'll also give you a catchall domain so you can either have generated emails like "adafergtrees@mozmail.com" or "NameOfArbitraryBusiness@deepsun.mozmail.com". If you want to trash an email you can do that too.
  - thesuitonym 10mo ago
    Well, I could, and actually did. Like I said, I couldn't get that email address out of the report.
liquidgecka 10mo ago
Yeah.. I have a five letter email that's a common first and last name @ gmail.com. I second everything you said. Getting report hits every few days are useless given how few sites do any kind of validation. :-/
- thaumasiotes 10mo ago
  > I have a five letter email that's a common first and last name @ gmail.com. What are the common two-letter first or last names?
  - tczMUFlmoNk 10mo ago
    Ng, Le, Li, Lu, Wu, Xu, Xi, Fu… come to mind immediately for last names. For first names… Jo, Ty, Al, maybe?
    - bobthepanda 10mo ago
      If you have a two letter last name you need a three letter first name to make five. Joe, Bob, Sam, etc.
nomilk 10mo ago
> I found (it) not actionable Tangental, but I found 'Have I Been Pwned' useless too because you can't enter your email and find leaked passwords associated with the address, instead you have to enter each password (and repeat for every password you want to check). I know there's an explanation that the raw password is not being sent and instead being hashed locally and only part of the hash is sent. But I don't know how to verify that and it feels wild to type passwords into a random website. (if anyone knows how to verify HIBP does only what it says it does [rather than blindly trust and hope for the best], would love to read more about it)
- culi 10mo ago
  Well of course a hostile actor could use this incredibly accessible resource to test a bunch of emails and find their passwords. Though perhaps there could be a service where you enter in an email address and it sends an email to that address containing the passwords. That would be a slightly more complicated server to set up though
  - IAmBroom 10mo ago
    OK, I would pay for this service. It doesn't use any information that's not already exposed. It reveals the extent of my problem to me.
  - dpoloncsak 10mo ago
    Im 99% sure this is exactly what HIBY used to do, and changed their processes. I'm unsure if this was due to government pressures or what
- clarionbell 10mo ago
  I always thought that it could be reasonably simple to have a safe alternative. Have people enter a SHA256 of their password instead, and match against a database of other hashes. Almost everyone interested in checking for password leaks knows how to generate SHA256 of a string. And those who don't shouldn't put their passwords on the internet. Or even better, generate hash for all passwords in the database, package these hashes together with a simple search script and let people download it. That way, you are not sending any information anywhere, and noone can exploit the passwords, because hash is a one way function. Then again, that download could be really large. I admit I have no idea how much storage would that take. But it's just text, so easily compressible. And with some smart indexing, it should be possible to keep most compressed and only unpack a relatively small portion to find a complete match. Then again, I have virtually no background in cryptography, could be something horribly wrong with this.

by prepend 10mo ago

thesuitonym 10mo ago

I never got the Google dark web reports, but my credit card used to send me reports constantly saying that my email address was 'found on the darkweb.' Okay, that's not useful information. If it showed me if there were associated passwords, that might be helpful, but just saying my address was found on the darkweb is meaningless. My email address is public information. The worst part is, it was an email address I hadn't used in about 10 years, and they wouldn't let me take it out of the report.

deepsun 10mo ago
Well you could change the email address you use for the financial services only, and keep it secret. Then it would be harder to impersonate you.
- placatedmayhem 10mo ago
  Or, use a service that lets you generate an address for each business you deal with or use case you have so you can treat them as disposable. After chasing down spammers and companies selling my info, including my email, I found this was easier to keep up with and is more effective. Spam me once or sell it to another company, and I burn that address, replacing it with the original company if I really need them to keep in contact.
  - deepsun 10mo ago
    I tried to do that but found out there's almost no services that I would want to treat my account there disposable. If I bother to provide them my email address -- I usually also want to access my account there later (e.g check order status). There are tens of services where I'd like it disposable, but hundreds of services where account is warranted. And some of those thousands will be compromised some day.
    - Terr_ 10mo ago
      I'd distinguish between an address one can choose to dispose of in an organized way versus an account you don't want to lose access to. I have my own domain, and pay a hosting company to manage the e-mail, which means it's easy to have ton of forwarding-only addresses for different purposes. This means that I register with mybank123@domain, if that ever leaks I can log in with them and change my e-mail to a new forwarding-address of mybank456@domain. Then retire the older one.
    - godelski 10mo ago
      You can do this with aliases. For example Firefox's relay (or you can do it with a website and cloudflare). They'll also give you a catchall domain so you can either have generated emails like "adafergtrees@mozmail.com" or "NameOfArbitraryBusiness@deepsun.mozmail.com". If you want to trash an email you can do that too.
- thesuitonym 10mo ago
  Well, I could, and actually did. Like I said, I couldn't get that email address out of the report.

liquidgecka 10mo ago

Yeah.. I have a five letter email that's a common first and last name @ gmail.com. I second everything you said. Getting report hits every few days are useless given how few sites do any kind of validation. :-/

thaumasiotes 10mo ago
> I have a five letter email that's a common first and last name @ gmail.com. What are the common two-letter first or last names?
- tczMUFlmoNk 10mo ago
  Ng, Le, Li, Lu, Wu, Xu, Xi, Fu… come to mind immediately for last names. For first names… Jo, Ty, Al, maybe?
  - bobthepanda 10mo ago
    If you have a two letter last name you need a three letter first name to make five. Joe, Bob, Sam, etc.

nomilk 10mo ago

> I found (it) not actionable Tangental, but I found 'Have I Been Pwned' useless too because you can't enter your email and find leaked passwords associated with the address, instead you have to enter each password (and repeat for every password you want to check). I know there's an explanation that the raw password is not being sent and instead being hashed locally and only part of the hash is sent. But I don't know how to verify that and it feels wild to type passwords into a random website. (if anyone knows how to verify HIBP does only what it says it does [rather than blindly trust and hope for the best], would love to read more about it)

culi 10mo ago
Well of course a hostile actor could use this incredibly accessible resource to test a bunch of emails and find their passwords. Though perhaps there could be a service where you enter in an email address and it sends an email to that address containing the passwords. That would be a slightly more complicated server to set up though
- IAmBroom 10mo ago
  OK, I would pay for this service. It doesn't use any information that's not already exposed. It reveals the extent of my problem to me.
- dpoloncsak 10mo ago
  Im 99% sure this is exactly what HIBY used to do, and changed their processes. I'm unsure if this was due to government pressures or what
clarionbell 10mo ago
I always thought that it could be reasonably simple to have a safe alternative. Have people enter a SHA256 of their password instead, and match against a database of other hashes. Almost everyone interested in checking for password leaks knows how to generate SHA256 of a string. And those who don't shouldn't put their passwords on the internet. Or even better, generate hash for all passwords in the database, package these hashes together with a simple search script and let people download it. That way, you are not sending any information anywhere, and noone can exploit the passwords, because hash is a one way function. Then again, that download could be really large. I admit I have no idea how much storage would that take. But it's just text, so easily compressible. And with some smart indexing, it should be possible to keep most compressed and only unpack a relatively small portion to find a complete match. Then again, I have virtually no background in cryptography, could be something horribly wrong with this.