Every year, we entrust our personal data to dozens of companies for various reasons: creating accounts, taking out subscriptions, ordering online… The problem is that not all companies have the level of security of giants like Apple, which unsurprisingly causes major failures in the protection of our personal data. To find out if your data is passing through the Dark Web, Google offers a special tool that monitors what is happening on Dark Web sites on a daily basis.
Thanks to Google, it is possible to know if your personal data is for sale on the Dark Web
There are millions of French people each year who are affected by personal data leaks. Do you have a box or mobile subscription with SFR? Your data has probably leaked September 3, 2024during an incident with the operator. Do you have an account on Twitch? Your data may have been lost in October 2021 in a massive cyberattack. More recently, the operator Free was the victim of a hack which allegedly compromised a ton of personal data as well as IBANs (not yet official).
Faced with this kind of phenomenon, as consumers and users, we are a little helpless, because we are forced to trust companies that are not necessarily at fault in the face of ever more ingenious and sophisticated cyberattacks. However, what is interesting to know is to know your personal data which is in the wild and which is the company which is behind the leak.
That’s good, since that’s exactly what Google offers. The Mountain View firm has set up a tool capable of searching daily on the Dark Web if your personal data is found in a file put up for sale. Google is able to tell you precisely where this data leak is coming from, is it a small site that has encountered a security problem or a large company to which you pay a monthly subscription?
How does it work?
The first step is to log in to your Google account, to do this, head to the site myaccount.google.com. In your personal space, you will have a “Security” section which will be at the top of the page. In this location, “Dark Web Report” will be located.
By default, this feature is disabled, however, just press “Start” to ask Google to search and monitor if your data appears on Darkweb sites.
As soon as you press this button, Google will ask you to configure a monitoring profile, you will need to enter your:
- First and last name
- Date of birth
- Mailing address
- Email address
- Phone number
Once the information is recorded, monitoring begins and Google finds you within minutes the data breaches that led to your information being exposed on the dark web.
In our case, Google found several data leaks that included our personal information, here is part of the list that was displayed:
- LDLC (August 26, 2024): first and last name, telephone number, email address and mobile number
- X (January 6, 2023): first and last name and email address
- Deezer (January 6, 2023): first and last name, email address, username and date of birth
- Foodora (May 28, 2020): first and last name and email address
- Canva (June 13, 2019): name, email address, password and username
Google also communicates a list of the data which is leaked the most, in our editorial result, the email has been the subject of 41 leaks, the passwords of 28 leaks, the username of 9 leaks and the name/first name of 6 leaks. In the conclusions that appear, we mainly find small sites, but there are also large companies which are normally supposed to be more vigilant regarding data leaks. We think for example of X, LDLC or even Deezer.
Even if this information is now in the hands of hackers, it is interesting to be informed so that you can change the password you use if it has been compromised. Thanks to Google, we have access to all this information without needing to go to the Dark Web and search questionable sites and forums ourselves.