DATA security experts are urging people to consider the safety of their personal information online after millions of email addresses and passwords were leaked in January.
The data breach, dubbed Collection #1, was found on a file sharing website and contained 87 gigabytes worth of data.
The information included usernames, email addresses, passwords and other personal details from thousands of different websites.
Head of the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at the University of Queensland Michael Brünig said the security of personal details captured online could not be guaranteed.
“There is always a risk of breaches where login details are captured, often from a large number of users,” he said.
“Unfortunately the past has shown that no corporation can be considered safe.”
He said that while there was no way to ensure complete data safety, there were ways to limit the impacts of a breach.
“Minimise data that is shared with any service provider to minimise the damage in case the data is stolen,” he said.
“Different passwords for every service is an absolute must.
“If there is a breach, only that one service is affected and everything else is still safe.”
The most recent large-scale data breach came just months after 30 million Facebook accounts were impacted by a data breach in October last year.
Data security was also brought to the spotlight during the approach of the cutoff date to opt out of My Health Record, which was on January 31.
People had expressed concerns about the safety of their medical records under the system.
